Albert Berg (1825 - 1884)

Albert Berg

Albert Berg was a German landscape painter and museum director.

Berg was educated in diplomacy and law, and also studied painting and painted landscapes. From his travels to Constantinople, New Granada, Rhodes and Asia Minor, Berg brought back many sketches and notes and published them. He was also a member of the Prussian and German Customs Union's diplomatic expedition to Asia and the Pacific in 1859-1862. This resulted in the publication of a pictorial narrative entitled The Prussian Expedition to East Asia: Views of Japan, China and Siam. This historical work reproduces watercolors, oil paintings, and pen and ink drawings, mostly by Albert Berg. The sheets depict views and scenes of Yeddo, Yokahama, Ikegami, Nagasaki, Tientsin, Beijing, Hong Kong, Macau, Ayudhya and Bangkok, with explanations in German, French and English. The crew also included merchants, geographers and botanists, the draughtsman Wilhelm Heine, and the photographers Karl Bismarck and August Sachtler.

In 1880, Albert Berg was appointed the first director of the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in Breslau and headed it until his death in 1884.