Franz Xaver Winterhalter

Franz Xaver Winterhalter was born in the Black Forest village of Menzenschwand. In 1818 he left for Freiburg/Breisgau to study and practice graphics for some five years with Karl Ludwig Schuler (1785-1852); he worked at Herder, the famous publishing house. In 1823 he moved to Munich, where he earned his living as a lithographer and portraitist until he was admitted to the Munich Academy. In addition to his academic training, he worked in the studio of Joseph Stieler (1781-1858), the miniaturist and portrait painter of the court of King Ludwig I of Bavaria. Stieler had once been a student of neoclassical portraitist François Gérard (1778-1837) in Paris. In Stieler's studio Winterhalter found the stimulus for his future career as a leading court portraitist in Europe. He began in Karlsruhe, the seat of the Margraves of Baden who had ruled parts of southwest Germany since the Middle Ages. Prior to his official appointment in 1834 as court painter of Grand Duke Leopold and his wife, Sophie Guillemette, Winterhalter spent two years in Italy where he joined the circle of French painters around Vernet (q.v.). After 1834 Winterhalter moved to Paris and soon became the most sought-after portraitist of royals and nobles throughout Europe. Winterhalter's brother, Hermann (1808-1891), a painter in his own right, followed him to Paris in 1840 and became his assistant. Winterhalter consistently served the French court from Louis-Philippe to Napoleon III, even becoming a favorite portraitist of Queen Victoria. In 1868 Winterhalter left Paris, traveling to various cities. At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, he happened to be in Switzerland and returned to Karlsruhe that same year. He died in Frankfurt of typhus in 1873.