Franz Xavier Winterhalter

"He is the greatest portrait painters of the 19th century" -- Queen Victoria

 1805-1873

German Academic Classicists Painter

Stylistically influenced by the following painters -  Paul Delaroche,  and  Thomas Couture

Cause of Death - Heart Failure

Description Franz Xavier Winterhalter's Academic Classicism Painting style

Followers of this movement were influenced by the high standards of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts, which practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism.  Academic Classicism attempted to merge both techniques to create the perfect style. It is characterized by adhering to a strict manner of painting, following narrow compositional rules and delicacy of color. The atmospheric effects are sumptuously luminescent. According to art historian, Walter Pater "To produce such effects at all requires all the resources of painting, with its power of indirect expression, of subordinate but significant detail, its atmosphere, its foregrounds and backgrounds."

Franz Xavier Winterhalter specialized portraits of royalty in the mid-1800s. Queen Victoria adored him and commissioned him to paint most of her children. His sophisticated academic style was widely admired by the crowned heads of Europe. He was the most fashionable court painter of his day.  As a painter he admired the  sculptures of the ancient Greeks as well as Renaissance painters.   According to Solomon Gessner, the great German painter and art historian, "By studying the works of Greek sculptors the painter can attain the sublimest conceptions of beauty, and learn what must be added to nature in order to give to the imitation dignity and propriety. 

Related Painters

 Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, 1817-1900

Adolphe-William  Bouguereau1825-1905

Charles Emile August  Carolus-Duran, 1837-1917

Leon Francois Comerre,  1850-1916

Pierre-Auguste  Cot 1837-1883

Thomas Couture, 1815-1879

Paul Delaroche 1797-1856

Eugene Fromentin,  1820-1876

Jean Leon Gerome,  1824-1904

 Jean-Paul Laurens1838-1921

 Adolphe Alexandre Lesrel,  1839-1929

Luc Olivier Merson,  1846-1920

Hans Makart,  1840 - 1884

Giulio Rosati,  1858-1917

 Franz Xavier  Winterhalter, 1805-1873

William Clarke Wontner, 1857-1930

Fritz  Zuber-Buhler, 1822-1896

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