Franz von Lenbach was the son of a stonemason and studied art
in Munich (1854) and Rome. He was appointed professor in Weimar
in 1862 and worked as a copyist from 1863 to 1868. Later he
became a celebrated portraitist and an important society personality
in late nineteenth century Munich.
Von Lenbach often
painted from photographs and his style reminds of Titian and
Rembrandt. He painted most celebrities of his time, among them
Peggy Guggenheim, Richard and Cosima Wagner, Pope Leo XIII,
Franz Liszt, Prinzregent Luitpold, William Gladstone, Emperor
Wilhelm I, emperor Francis Joseph. Lenbach portrayed Bismarck
numerous times.
He was ennobled in 1882 and a few years
later his fame enabled him to build a large villa at the Königsplatz
in Munich.
Lenbach married Magdalena Gräfin Moltke,
who was 28 years his junior, in 1888 in Breslau. In 1892 they
had a daughter, Marion. A second daughter, Erika, was born in
1895. At that time the marriage was already failing and they
split up in 1896. Erika stayed with her mother and Marion with
her father. Soon afterwards he married his pupil Charlotte von
Hornstein and in 1899 their daughter Gabriele was born. Magdalena
von Moltke married Bismarck's physician, Dr. Ernst Schwenninger.
The
Lenbach Villa in München is a municipal museum since 1929. In
1936 his widow bought the house in Schrobenhausen where he was
born and it was turned into a Lenbachmuseum.
Related persons
• has a connection with Böcklin, Arnold
• painted Franz Joseph von Habsburg, Kaiser von Österreich
• was a friend of Kaulbach, Friedrich August von
• painted Liszt, Cosima
• painted Liszt, Franz
• painted Luitpold, Prince Regent of Bavaria
• was pupil to Piloty, Karl Theodor von
• painted Schumann, Clara Josephine
• was rival of Stuck, Franz von
• painted Wagner, Richard
• painted Wilhelm I, emperor of Germany
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Sources
• Baedeker's Munich, The Automobile Association, 1985
• Schilderkunst van A tot Z, REBO, Lisse, 1990
• Bartleby.com: Great Books Online -- Quotes, Poems, Novels, Classics and hundreds more
• Stadt Schobenhausen - Lenbachstadt im Spargelland - Öffnungszeiten der Museen
• Baumstark, Reinhold (ed.), Lenbach, Sonnenbilder und Porträts, Pinakothek-Dumont, München, 2004
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