Robert Koehler (1850 - 1917)

Robert Koehler

Robert Koehler was a German-born painter and art teacher who spent most of his career in the United States. Koehler was born in Hamburg; his family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1854. There he attended the historic German-English Academy. He apprenticed himself to a lithography firm. In 1871, he went to New York City and stayed to work as a lithographer. After studying drawing in the night classes of the National Academy of Design, Koehler went to Munich to study fine art at the Royal Academy in 1873. In 1879, he was able to return to Munich. Koehler's work while in Munich won him silver and bronze awards from the Academy, and Bavaria's Cross of the Order of St. Michael. Koehler then set himself up as head of a private art school. He began to exhibit in the National Academy, New York, in 1877. In 1885 he took charge of a private school of art in that city. He organized the American department of the international art exhibition at Munich in 1883, and was appointed by the Bavarian authorities to act in the same capacity in the exhibition of 1888. In 1892 Robert Koehler returned to New York City to work as a portrait artist. The following year he moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, accepting an offer to be the director of the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts (now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design). Koehler was also involved with the establishment of Minneapolis' Museum of Fine Art, now the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. He was a pioneer of art instruction and appreciation in the region. Koehler continued working in Minneapolis, painting portraits and landscapes, teaching painting, and arranging exhibitions. He retired as director in 1914.

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