Alexander von Humboldt
Alexander von Humboldt c1843 by German Painter Joseph Karl Stieler (1781 – 1858); was a Neoclassical Portrait painter who worked as a royal court painter to the Bavarian Kings and who is known for the Gallery of Beauties at Nymphenburg Palace in Munich as well as his portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven, which he did 1820.
This is a magnificent portrait of Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (1769 – 1859) a Prussian polymath (a person who’s knowledge spans a significant number of subjects), geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science.
His quantitative work on Botanical Geography laid the foundation for the field of Biogeography; and his approach and advocacy for long term Systematic Geophysical measurement became the foundation on which modern Geomagnetic and Meterological monitoring is based.
This is a retouched digital art old masters reproduction of a public domain image.
Info Below From Wikipedia.org
Joseph was born in the city of Mainz, Germany to a long-established family of engravers, punchcutters and die makers; receiving some artistic training from his father, August Friedrich Stieler (1736 – 1789).
After the untimely death of his father, Joseph Karl autodidactically completed his apprenticeship and began his career as a painter of miniatures, which were increasingly sought after by the bourgeois circles.
After Mainz had been occupied by French revolutionary troops in 1792, Stieler followed the expelled court of Prince-Archbishop Friedrich Karl Joseph von Erthal to Aschaffenburg.
Here he met with the later Archbishop Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg, who became his most important patron and sponsor.
From 1802 to 1805 he attended the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in the master class of Heinrich Füger. Stieler’s portrait style was most especially shaped during his work in the Parisian atelier of François Gérard, a student of Jacques-Louis David.
