Sharp realism in egg tempera, painted through turbulent years
Barthel Gilles was a German painter tied to New Objectivity, mixing sharp realism with old Rhenish traditions. He often used egg tempera on panel, working with slow glazing like the 15th‑century masters.
Barthel Gilles at a glance
- Born: August 31, 1891, Rendsburg, Germany
- Died: November 19, 1977, Wees, near Flensburg, Germany
- Nationality: German
- Known for: New Objectivity painting with sharp realism
- Medium: Egg tempera on panel
- Training: Cologne and Düsseldorf
- Signature works: Mädchen mit Schleier (1937), Ruhrkampf
- Collections: Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen
Two men at work on a boat in a harbor, painted with the sharp, detailed realism typical of New Objectivity. 
A detail from “Ruhrkampf,” Gilles’s 1930 painting of the armed worker uprisings that followed the Kapp Putsch. 
A close, unflinching self-portrait, painted with the slow glazing technique Gilles borrowed from the old German masters. 
“Mädchen mit Schleier,” Gilles’s 1937 portrait of a young woman wrapped in a yellow and teal veil. 
Gilles shown at his easel, brush and palette in hand, a classic painter’s self-portrait. 
A quiet domestic still life, rendered with the same careful precision Gilles brought to his portraits. 
A young woman in front of a farmhouse and rolling fields, painted with calm, clear-eyed realism. 
A mother and child painted in a style that echoes old Rhenish and early Netherlandish religious art. 
A looser, more painterly portrait of a man at a table, closer to Gilles’s earlier expressionist work. 
A bold, loosely painted abstract study from Gilles’s early expressionist period, before his shift to New Objectivity. 
A landscape scene reflecting the old Rhenish traditions Gilles folded into his realist style. 
A portrait built up in thin, slow layers of egg tempera, the technique Gilles kept returning to throughout his career. 
A social scene painted with the quiet precision typical of the New Objectivity movement. 
A closing detail from Gilles’s gallery, showing the careful, old-master handling of light and form he was known for.
Born in 1891 in Rendsburg, northern Germany, he apprenticed as a decorative painter in Koblenz and Cologne, then studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1909 to 1911. He served in World War I from 1914 to 1918 and was wounded in action. After the war he settled in Cologne and joined local artist groups, and his early work leaned expressionist before he shifted toward New Objectivity in the 1920s, painting portraits, landscapes and social scenes with calm precision.
The 1937 Mädchen mit Schleier shows his technical skill, mixing medieval detail with a quiet unease typical of the movement. Gilles also painted political subjects: his Ruhrkampf (1930) revealed the violent worker uprisings and repression before Hitler’s rise.
Gilles joined the Communist Party in 1929, but his path through the Nazi years was more complicated than a simple ban. He took part in the first Nazi-approved exhibition, “Westkunst,” in Essen in 1933, and from 1938 on his work appeared in shows run by the Nazi leisure organization Kraft durch Freude. He formally joined the Nazi Party in 1937. Many of his paintings were destroyed in a 1943 bombing raid.
He traveled widely through Europe, and today his works appear in museums like the Suermondt‑Ludwig‑Museum in Aachen, though he remains lesser known than he deserves. Gilles died in 1977 in Wees, near Flensburg, where a mural he painted of a sailing ship still survives on a building, and a local path was later named after him.