Franz Xaver Winterhalter

Painter and lithographer, Franz Xaver Winterhalter was the most sought-after portrait painter in Europe around 1850. He trained in Munich with the engraver Karl Ludwig Schüller and then at the Academy under the direction of the portrait painter Joseph Stieler. The success of his portraits of the rulers of the Duchy of Baden enabled him to obtain a scholarship to travel to Italy in 1832. In Italy, Franz Xaver Winterhalter mainly painted genre scenes. He also befriended French artists and moved to Paris in 1834. First Winterhalter made his mark in Paris at the Salon of 1836 with his genre painting Il Dolce Farniente. However it was as a portrait painter that he became famous. He executed the effigies of Prince de Wagram with his daughter, of the Queen Louise of the Belgians, and painted the ceremonial portrait of Leopold I. He portrayed King Louis-Philippe for the dynastic gallery of the Château de Versailles and then became the official painter of the imperial family. Queen Victoria commissioned him for more than one hundred paintings between 1842 and 1871, which obliged him to reside regularly in England. After the war of 1870-71, Franz Xaver Winterhalter moved to Karlsruhe.