Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller

Born: Vienna, 15 January 1793

Died: near Baden, 23 August 1865

Nationality: Austrian


Works by this Artist

Peasant Wedding
Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, 1843

Studies

with portrait painter Johann Baptist Lampi, with Hubert Maurer, with Wilhelm Johann Nepomuk Schödlberger at Vienna Academy (Akademie der Bildenden Künste)

Career

1822 – exhibition debut at Vienna Academy

1827 – first imperial commission: a portrait of Emperor Francis I (private collection)

1829 – professor at Vienna Academy; publishes 10 essays criticizing Vienna Academy teaching methods

1840 – begins to focus on genre paintings

1846 – publishes The Requirements of a Meaningful Pedagogy in Painting and Sculpture (Das Bedürfnis eines zweckmässigeren Unterrichtes in der Malerei und plastischen Kunst)

1849 – publishes Suggestions for the Reform of the Austrian Imperial Academy of Fine Arts (Vorschläge zur Reform der Österreichischkaiserlichen Akademie der bildenden Kunst)

1857 - publishes Implications for the Stimulation of Patriotic Painting (Andeutungen zur Belebung der vaterländischen bildenden Kunst)

Travels

Italy (1825); Dresden, Munich, Frankfurt (1827); London (1856)

Commissions from

Francis I (Emperor of Austria)

Important Artworks

Prater Landscape, 1831 (Cleveland Museum of Art)

An African, 1833 (Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh)

Young Peasant Woman with Three Children at the Window, 1840 (Neue Pinokothek, Munich)

The Soup Kitchen, 1859 (Belvedere Museum, Vienna)

After Confiscation, 1859 (Gemäldegalerie, Dresden)

Early Spring in the Vienna Woods, 1861 (Belvedere Museum, Vienna)

Readings

Norman, Geraldine. Biedermeier Painting, 1815-1848: Reality Observed in Genre, Portrait, and Landscape. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1987

Schröder, Klaus Albrecht. Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller. Munich: Prestel, 1990 (in German)

Waldmüller, Ferdinand Georg. Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, 1793-1865. Exhibition catalogue. Vienna: C. Brandstätter, 2009 (in German)

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