Alfred Juergens

Alfred Juergens (August 5, 1866 – April 18, 1934) was an American impressionist painter.

Life Alfred Juergens had German roots: his father Ludwig Daniel Juergens had immigrated to Milwaukee in the early 1840s. Ludwig Daniel Juergens earned his money with painting, although at times only as a sign painter. Together with his eldest son Theodore, he founded a business called L. Juergens & Son, Paints in 1875. His daughter Bertha married Adolph Kruger in 1876, who would later also join the family business.

Juergens was born in Chicago. He is said to have said of his early childhood upbringing "You might say I was born in a paint-pot". at the Art Academy in Munich and continued his studies on 18 October 1887 in the nature class with Nikolaos Gyzis and Wilhelm von Diez. He lived in Paris from 1889 to 1893. He returned to Chicago, to work on the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, likely on murals or other decorations, and set up a studio in the building of the Academy of Design. In 1894 he returned to Munich, from where he also travelled to Italy. The illness and death of his mother Wilhelmina, née Prosch, finally prompted him to return to America. There he also gave lessons; Among his students was Clarence W. Wigington.

In 1895, 1898 and 1900 he exhibited in the Munich Glass Palace. He was then represented at exhibitions in the USA, including the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. Over 100 years later, numerous works by the artist from the Tikalsky Collection, which Francis Tikalsky had once put together, were shown to the public again.

Juergens died in 1934 in Oak Park, Illinois.

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