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.")