Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Move to Paris

"El Dolce Farniente" by Franz Winterhalter

"In August 1834, Franz Xaver Winterhalter was appointed court painter to the Grand Duke, no doubt as a result of his Italian trip. Then suddenly, in December, Winterhalter packed his bags and departed for Paris, settling at no. 17 rue des Petits Augustins, an area in which he would reside for the next thirty-six years. He had made his decisive move, not within Germany, but to the capital of a foreign country. We can only guess at the reasons for this dramatic move. Even with the support of patrons, the chances of success for a foreign painter, in a city not short of native talent, were decidedly risky. 

Instinct must have told Winterhalter that his sympathies lay overwhelmingly with French painting, and that the prospects of patronage for a court painter were much greater in this cosmopolitan centre than in any of the German capitals. Paris would be his testing ground.

Within months of arrival, Winterhalter had sent his first contribution to the Salon, a portrait of an unidentified woman. During 1835, he was devoting his energies to a more substantial contribution. 'Il Dolce Farniente,' a dreamy siesta scene set in Naples and staffed by an unusually large cast of handsome girls and young men, was a full-scale academic composition, dressed up as a genre scene. The harmonious disposition of the figures on two levels, the studied poses, and the mood of dreamy reverie, were inspired by Raphael's 'Parnassus.' Winterhalter was creating a Golden Age in modern dress, with exotic Italian props, and here lay the secret of its success. When the Salon of 1836 opened, 'Il Dolce Farniente' scored an immediate success; it was widely noticed in the press and it established its author as an up-and-coming man.

At the 1837 Salon, he followed up his earlier success with 'The Decameron,' a picture of Boccaccio's circle of storytellers. The recipe was the same as before, a tightly controlled academic composition in the style of Raphael, this time in a picturesque historical setting. Once again he scored a success. It was decorative and colourful, and formed a welcome contrast to the violent productions of the Romantic School. The picture was sold for 10,000 francs to a wealthy wool merchant and philanthropist, the Deputé Paturle, a fact sufficiently well publicized to reach the ears of Baron Eichtal, who relayed it at once to Menzenschwand."

To be continued

(Excerpts from the introduction by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")

 

Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Italy

"Study of Italian Girl"
by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

"There is no doubt of the liberating effect which Italy had on Franz Xaver Winterhalter's imagination. In his only surviving letter from Rome, written from the Caffè Greco, on 12 March 1833, he wrote of his delight in the country: 'I will be glad all of my life that I came here.' Free for the first time from the pressures of lithographic work and portrait commissions, he raised his sights to academic composition and embraced new subject matter. His pencil was never still; a surviving sketchbook includes copies from the Old Masters, figure studies, landscapes, and ideas for compositions. Six of his drawings after Michelangelo's figures of prophets and sybils in the Sistine Chapel were later lithographed by Josef Anton Selb and published in a portfolio by Anton Werder in Munich. 

The apparently simple, sensual, uncomplicated lives of the Italian peasants of the south, resplendent in native costume, provided excellent copy for Romantic, Northern painters in love with the Mediterranean. Numbers of German painters, and those of other nationalities, devoted themselves to this popular and profitable genre. Winterhalter threw himself into this enchanted world with enthusiasm, developing a new richness of palette, a new fluency of technique and subtle effects of lighting.

Winterhalter left Rome early in 1834, returning to Karlsruhe not only with saleable pictures but with plans for several large-scale pictures in his mind. Events in his life now moved rapidly." 

To be continued

(Excerpts from the introduction by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")  

 

Franz Xaver Winterhalter: To Karlsruhe and Beyond

"Portrait of a Young Architect, 
Probably Karl Josef Berckmüller"
by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

"In the summer of 1828, Franz Xaver Winterhalter visited Karlsruhe and began to cement his relations at court. Karlsruhe was a political and cultural backwater, and the Grand Duchess Sophie must have found the presence of a talented young artist a distraction from the stifling provincialism of court life. It was no doubt at her instigation that Winterhalter was employed on Royal commissions, an early instance of his adroitness in cultivating the feminine interest at court.

Many of his commissions also served as the source of prints as Winterhalter capitalized on his skills as a lithographer to earn extra income. Although he came to Karlsruhe each year for a specified period, his base was Munich. He told his parents in a letter of 16 January 1830, 'We both keep painting portraits but otherwise nothing else. . . I expect I shall be coming to Karlsruhe in three months' time, but I am not yet certain. I still have to write and ask if I may come.'

Late in 1832, he set out on a long postponed visit to Italy, in part funded by Grand Duke Leopold, arriving in Rome early in 1833. No serious German artist could consider his education complete without a visit to Rome, the centre of a large, polyglot community of artists. Winterhalter had a number of friends in Rome. A drawing by the architect, H.W. Schüle, dated 4 March 1833, includes the painter among a group of convivial drinking companions. Winterhalter did not, however, share the fervent idealism or nationalism common to so many German artists in Rome. In matters of taste he leaned, by instinct, towards Horace Vernet and the French Academy, earning the nickname of 'der Französische' among his contemporaries. His introduction to Vernet came from the Count Jenison, the Bavarian ambassador in Paris, and the young German assiduously cultivated his friendship."

To be continued

(Excerpts from the introduction by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")  

 

Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Progress

"Sophie, Grand Duchesse of Baden"
by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

"Franz Xaver Winterhalter had arrived in Munich for studies at a momentous period of its history. The new King, Ludwig I, was a Maecenas* of the arts, intent on turning his capital into a new Athens. Architects were commissioned to design prestigious public buildings in the Classical style and artists employed to decorate them. Two of the leading luminaries of German art, Peter Cornelius and Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld came to Munich in the 1820s to carry out monumental mural schemes and their achievements raised Munich's prestige to unparalleled heights. Cornelius took up the post of Director of the Munich Academy in 1825, soon after Winterhalter had begun to study drawing and painting there.

In July 1825, Winterhalter received a modest and welcome acknowledgement of his progress. He was given a pension of 200 florins** by the Grand Duke of Baden in return for executing an annual drawing. Writing in the same year, he described the work he was doing:

'I have drawn a few other portraits, partly because I have been paid for them, partly because I had to do them out of complaisance and courtesy. But now I am going to work continuously at the portrait for the Grand Duke. By the 8 February he has to have it in the room. When this is finished I must attend the Academy and work diligently under the direction of the new director, Cornelius, if I am in time to have good references, and how necessary these are for Karlsruhe [the capital of the Grand Duchy of Baden]! For academic study is what really matters, and if in time I should wish for favour from the court, or an appointment, they would look for an academic education. So now we have to sit down and work like schoolboys beside a crowd of others. We now have one hour's lecture on anatomy every afternoon from three o'clock till four. We often have to tear ourselves away violently from our lithography, for although we are earning money, the actual learning is not making progress. When my drawing is finished for the Grand Duke, I will quite definitely paint both portraits.'

Winterhalter also traveled in Germany to look at works of art, and wrote sententiously, 'An artist needs to see other men's work if he would himself create.'  He had received patronage from the Grand Duke, Ludwig, but in the near future it would be the his half-brother, Prince Leopold, and his beautiful wife, Sophie, that the artist would owe his advancement." 

* a generous patron

** "In 1825, 30 florins could buy a pair of boots, and 60-70 florins could buy a coat. A salary of 4,000 florins was considered a very high, upper-class income. Therefore, 200 florins represented several months' to a year's wages for a skilled worker." 

To be continued

(Excerpts from the introduction, by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")  

Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Munich

"Woman Reading a Letter"
by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

"The decision that Franz Xaver Winterhalter should train in Munich had been taken on Baron Eichtal's advice and with his support. He finally left the Herder Institute early in 1823. An emotional letter of farewell from a young priest who taught there is dated 23 January 1823. He warned the young artist to be sincere, God-fearing and diligent, to avoid the company of inferiors, and not to raise himself in the world by a liaison with a fashionable woman and to steel himself against desire and lust. Winterhalter was said to have carried the letter with him wherever he went, an indication of his simple and pious outlook on life that changed little with age.

It had been decided that his brother, Hermann, should join him in Munich, after a second fracas with Herder, and the older brother wrote to advise his father as to what things Hermann should bring with him:

'His shirts must be of fine linen. The best you can do and must do is to ask Frank's sisters to cut them out and sew one of them as a pattern. They must have many pleats and very fine collars. For you must not imagine that things are the same here as they are at home or in Freiburg: here one has to be very well dressed simply to be ordinary. But my brother, through us, is going to become acquainted with people of such station. It is happening to us more and more every day, and at the same time our business is very good. It is natural: where the common people give a guilder, the important people give a thaler, and they are no better informed. He will see for himself how good things are. If he has got decent waistcoats at home he should bring them and his coat, too. He might also have some boots made in Freiburg, so that they are not Menzenschwand clodhoppers; they must be elegant boots.'

Winterhalter had gotten work as a lithographer which enabled him to keep himself, as well as earning small sums from portrait commissions. Over twenty lithographs by him from this Munich period are known, mostly after the work of other artists. By 1825, he had joined the Munich Academy where he continued to draw from life. He had also joined the studio of the fashionable portrait painter, Josef Stieler. Winterhalter must have been useful as an assistant, and he is also known to have lithographed several of Stieler's portraits."

To be continued

(Excerpts from the introduction, by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")  

Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Apprenticeship

"Self-Portrait" at 17 years of age
pencil on paper
by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

"Within a year of the young Winterhalter's arrival, his teacher, Karl Ludwig Schuler, was appointed as Director of the Institute for the Arts established by the publishing house of Herder. His eight apprentices went with him, and boarded at Herder's, to become part of a team of engravers and lithographers producing the illustrated books for which Herder was famous. 

The young Winterhalter wrote to his parents of the bullying he suffered from the other apprentices, of the bad language they used, of Bartholomaus Herder's rages at their ingratitude and of his own determination to be a religious painter. He worked on copper-plate engravings of peasant scenes, religious subjects for Bible illustrations and on lithographic reproductions of famous works of art. His artistic training was not neglected, and there are several surviving drawings by him from plaster casts of Classical busts, as well as animal studies and sporting scenes. 

In 1819, Winterhalter was joined by his eleven-year-old brother Fidel, or Hermann, as he would become known. Their lives were simple and circumscribed. By 1822, the two brothers were living in lodgings in the town and beginning to draw from life. Winterhalter's surviving life studies show a stronger grasp of form, and a surer technique, than his drawings of busts. His sense of his own achievement and his self-evident talent, coupled with an ambition to get on, soon made his restive at the Herder Institute. He wanted to pursue his career in less restrictive and provincial surroundings, and he was encouraged in his desire to move by Baron Eichtal. 

The irascible Herder, however, was not prepared to release his gifted apprentice without a fight. He complained to Winterhalter's father: 

'For some time now, the disgusting ingratitude of my apprentices has made me positively ill, and it gets worse and worse...the revolutionary conduct in my Institute I will not tolerate. I would sooner dismiss all my ungrateful and unwilling apprentices at once than allow myself to be played with. The parents are very much to blame.' 

But a compromise was worked out. Winterhalter would be allowed to leave the following year to train in Munich, while Hermann remained with Herder at the Institute." 

To be continued

(Excerpts from the introduction, by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")  

 

Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Beginnings

"Portrait of a Lady with a Fan"
by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

"Franz Xaver Winterhalter was born in Menzenschwand, a small village in the upper reaches of the Black Forest in Germany, on April 20, 1805. Though considerably altered, the Winterhalter family house still stands to this day in the village and the painter is commemorated by a public memorial and a room at the local inn named in his honor.

Franz Xaver, known in youth as Xaver, had four brothers and four sisters, of whom only four survived beyond infancy.  The passionate interest shown by Fidel in the careers of his sons, and his anxious solicitude for them long after they had grown up, is evidence of this. So is the reciprocal interest shown by Winterhalter himself in events at home. Year after year he returned to Menzenschwand, followed the fortunes of his sisters and their children, and contributed financial assistance. His character had been formed by the independence, conservative outlook, simple morality and deeply-held Catholic beliefs of the rural community in which he had been raised. These qualities continued to exert a determining influence on him throughout his life.

Franz Xaver and his brother Hermann were both taught at the local Pfarr-schule by the priest, Father Lieber. Lieber was interested in the arts, and had acquired his own modest picture collection. He encouraged the two brothers to draw, nurtured their talent and drew their work to the attention of a local grandee, Daniel Seligmann, Baron Eichtal, who ran a textile factory. He had become one of the leading industrialists in the Grand Duchy of Baden, and a prominent figure at court in Karlsruhe.

Between them, Father Lieber and Eichtal persuaded Winterhalter's father to allow his son to train professionally as an artist. They may well have helped to raise the initial premium necessary to apprentice him for four years, and to pay for his board and instruction. He left Menzenschwand in 1818 at the age of thirteen to study drawing and engraving in the studio of an established Freiburg artist, Karl Ludwig Schuler."

To be continued

(Excerpts from the introduction, by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")