FRANZ XAVER WINTERHALTER was born at Menzenschwand, in the Black Forest, on April 20th, 1806, and he died at Frankfurt in 1873.... Winterhalter, after engraving in his youth at Freiburg, went to Munich in 1823, then in 1828 to Carlsruhe, where he painted a portrait of the Grand Duke Leopold, and so burst into popular favour. The year 1834 saw him in Paris.... he had just the gift of the Victorian grand manner.... He followed the direct line of fashionable painters, from Holbein downwards, and certainly had the worst of times to paint in. He managed in his own way to dignify the crinoline. He managed to get a certain sense of space out of the popular portrait arrangements of his time — the curtain, the park, and the vase of flowers. And, beyond that, he certainly knew how to paint a beautiful woman.... — Dion Clayton Calthrop, pp. 131-32

... the German artist Franx Xaver Winterhalter ... would become [Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's] favoured contemporary painter and would produce over one hundred works in oil for his royal patrons between 1842 and 1871. Winterhalter was recommended to the Queen by Queen Louise of the Belgians, wife of her uncle Leopold, who described the artist in a letter to Queen Victoria as "a very excellent man full of zeal for his art, of goodwill, obligingness and real modesty" (RA VIC/MAIN/Y/9/ 77). He first arrived in London in May 1842 and returned each summer or autumn for six or seven weeks for many years. — A. R. (Anna Reynolds), p. 63

Biographical Material and Discussions

The Royal Family

Other portraits

Engravings shown in "Winterhalter and the Crinoline"

Bibliography

A.R. (Reynolds, Anna). Entries 12 and 13 in Victoria & Albert: Art & Love. Edited by Jonathan Marsden. London: Royal Collection Publications, 2010. [Review].

Calthrop, Dion Clayton. "Winterhalter and the Crinoline." The Connoisseur, Vol. 31 (November 1911): 131-38. Internet Archive. Web. 30 July 2024.


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Last modified 30 July 2024