Franz Xavier
Winterhalter
(b Menzenschwand, Baden Württemberg, 20 April 1805; d
Frankfurt am Main, 8 July 1873).
German painter and lithographer. He trained as a draughtsman and
lithographer in the workshop of Karl Ludwig Schüler (1785–1852) in
Freiburg im Breisgau and went to Munich in 1823, sponsored by the
industrialist Baron Eichtal. In 1825 he began a course of study at the
Akademie and was granted a stipend by Ludwig I, Grand Duke of Baden. The
theoretical approach to art of the Akademie under the direction of Peter
Cornelius was unfamiliar to him, as in Freiburg he had been required to
paint in a popular style. He found the stimulus for his future
development in the studio of Joseph Stieler, a portrait painter who was
much in demand and who derived inspiration from French painting.
Winterhalter became his collaborator in 1825. From Stieler he learnt to
make the heads of figures emerge from shadow and to use light in the
modelling of faces. He moved to Karlsruhe in 1830 with his brother
Hermann Winterhalter (1808–92), who had also trained with Schüler and
had followed him to Munich.