KAULBACH, FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON (1850-1920)

*PRICE ON APPLICATION*
 
"Orpheus & His Harp" (c.1900)
Oil on board
33 x 45cm
Studio stamp on verso
*private collection, Melbourne
 
Kaulbach was a prominent German Genre Painter, and favourite artist of Adolf Hitler. He was a portraitist and historical painter; son of Theodor Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Kaulbach (1822–1903), the court painter at Hannover, and the great nephew of Wilhelm Kaulbach, another prominent member of the Kaulbach family of artists. He learned to paint from his father, and later was a student of August von Kreling at the Kunstgewerbeschule Nürnberg (Nuremberg school of arts and crafts), a predecessor institution of the Academy of Fine Arts, Nuremberg under influential German painter, Franz Von Stuck. He is famous for his decorative and enthusiastic portraits of predominantly feminine society in the French style of the 19th century. His portraits were mostly commissioned works, the portrayed almost exclusively members of the highest German and American social circles. He was a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin and director of the Munich Academy. However, he is perhaps best known for the fact he was one of Hitler's favourite painters. In fact, his epic masterpiece "Triumph Of Music" was the pride of the Third Reich Chancellery dining room, and Hitler requested to face the painting during every meal (as seen in the photos). It was destroyed when the Führerbunker was bombed during WWII. 
 
This impressive, historically important study was likely a draft for his masterpiece, as few paintings exist of Kaulbach's work on the theme of music.