Portrait Of Empress Elisabeth of Austria
Empress Elisabeth of Austria c1865 by German Painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805 – 1873), a Neoclassicism and Romanticism portrait artist of the 19th century.
This portrait depicts Empress Elisabeth in a beautiful and graceful ballroom gown, posing by a large column adorned with flowers which makes up part of a gate way onto a large landscape as evening approaches.
The sky is a rich hue of dark blue and light blues, with a spattering of aqua blues that blend in with an expanse white and blue clouds and a beautiful blue ocean below.
Portrait Of Empress Elisabeth of Austria is a retouched digital art reproduction of a public domain image that is available for purchase as a canvas print online.
Info Below Derived From Wikipedia.org
Franz Xaver Winterhalter was born in the small village of Menzenschwand, (now part of Sankt Blasien), in Germany’s Black Forest in the Electorate of Baden, on April 20, 1805.
He was the sixth child of Fidel Winterhalter (1773 – 1863), a farmer and resin producer in the village, and his wife Eva Meyer (1765 – 1838), a member of a long established Menzenschwand family.
His father was of peasant stock and was a powerful influence in his life. Of the eight brothers and sisters, only four survived infancy.
Throughout his life Franz Xaver remained very close to his family, in particular to his brother Hermann (1808 – 1891), who was also a painter.
After attending school at a Benedictine monastery in St. Blasien, Winterhalter left Menzenschwand in 1818 at the age of 13 to study drawing and engraving.
He trained as a draughtsman and lithographer in the workshop of Karl Ludwig Schüler (1785 – 1852) in Freiburg im Breisgau. In 1823, at the age of 18, he went to Munich, sponsored by the industrialist Baron von Eichtal (1775 – 1850).
In 1825, he was granted a stipend by Ludwig I, Grand Duke of Baden (1763 – 1830) and began a course of study at the Academy of Arts in Munich with Peter von Cornelius (1783 – 1867), whose academic methods made him uncomfortable.
Winterhalter found a more congenial mentor in the fashionable portraitist Joseph Karl Stieler (1781 – 1858). During this time, he supported himself working as lithographer.
Winterhalter entered court circles when in 1828 he became drawing master to Sophie Margravine of Baden, at Karlsruhe.
His opportunity to establish himself beyond southern Germany came in 1832 when he was able to travel to Italy, with the support of Grand Duke Leopold of Baden.
In Rome he composed romantic genre scenes in the manner of Louis Léopold Robert and attached himself to the circle of the director of the French Academy, Horace Vernet.
On his return to Karlsruhe he painted portraits of the Grand Duke Leopold of Baden and his wife, and was appointed painter to the grand-ducal court.
Nevertheless, he left Baden and move to France, where his Italian genre scene Il dolce Farniente attracted notice at the Salon of 1836, and a year later he won praise for his painting Il Decameron; both of these paintings are academic compositions in the style of Raphael.
In the Salon of 1838 he exhibited a portrait of the Prince of Wagram with his young daughter; and soon after that his career as a portrait painter was secured, when in the same year he painted Louise Marie of Orleans, Queen of the Belgians, and her son.
It was probably through this painting that Winterhalter came to the notice of Maria Amalia of the Two Sicilies, Queen of the French, mother of the Queen of the Belgians.
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