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.")