Portrait of Helene Kreszenz Sedlmayr by Joseph Karl Stieler - Ludwig I Beautiful Women's Gallery

Portrait of Helene Kreszenz Sedlmayr

Portrait of Helene Kreszenz Sedlmayr (1813 – 1898) c1831 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.

Helene, the daughter of a shoemaker was consider to be the epitome of Munich Germany’s 19th century beauties.

Ludwig I King of Bavaria first took note of her when she was 15 years of age, as she supplied toys to his children; and he commissioned a portrait of her from Joseph Karl Stieler for his Gallery of Beauties.

The Gallery of Beauties is a collection of 36 portraits of the most beautiful women of the nobility and middle classes of Munich Germany, painted mostly by Joseph Karl Stieler between 1827 through 1850; who was appointed court painter in 1820.

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.