STIELER, Karl Joseph

The competition between the painters nourished the growth of thematic specialization in the academies. In Munich, the term “Fächler” (subject specialists) became current, as painters specialised in landscape, portrait, history, or religious painting. Some fought their way through the fierce competition to become widely celebrated. They include the portrait painter Karl Joseph Stieler, who was commissioned by King Ludwig I of Bavaria to paint a portrait gallery of the most graceful ladies in the land. The subjects include Nanette Kaula, the 17-year-old daughter of the head of the Jewish community, who was married to a nephew of Heinrich Heine, and Amalie Schintling, who died young. Stieler was not only technically highly accomplished, but has also left a document of the ideal of beauty of his time.

Goethe was a German poet, dramatist, novelist, and scientist, one of the great masters of world literature, his genius embraced most fields of human endeavor; his art and thought are epitomized in his great dramatic poem Faust. 19th-century composers - among others Franz Schubert - composed many sonds based on Goethe’s poems.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 7 minutes):

Franz Schubert: An den Mond (To the Moon) (Goethe) D 296

Ludwig I (1786-1868) was king of Bavaria from 1825 until the 1848 revolutions in the German states. He was the godson and namesake of Louis XVI of France. As admirer of ancient Greece and the Italian Renaissance Ludwig patronised the arts as principal of many neoclassical buildings, especially in Munich, and as fanatic collector.

The competition between the painters nourished the growth of thematic specialization in the academies. In Munich, the term “Fächler” (subject specialists) became current, as painters specialised in landscape, portrait, history, or religious painting. Some fought their way through the fierce competition to become widely celebrated. They include the portrait painter Karl Joseph Stieler, who was commissioned by King Ludwig I of Bavaria to paint a portrait gallery of the most graceful ladies in the land. The subjects include Nanette Kaula, the 17-year-old daughter of the head of the Jewish community, who was married to a nephew of Heinrich Heine, and Amalie Schintling, who died young. Stieler was not only technically highly accomplished, but has also left a document of the ideal of beauty of his time.

The portrait of Prince Karl of Bavaria in a green riding coat belongs to a series of portraits of the Prince which Stieler painted between 1816 and 1817. The sitter, Prince Karl Theodor of Bavaria (1795-1875) was the second son of Maximilian I, King of Bavaria and Wilhelmine Auguste (n�e Princess of Hessen-Darmstadt). He was the painter’s greatest patron.

The sitter of this signed and dated portrait, Therese Alexandra Freifrau von Tettenborn (1788-1876), was the wife of Friedrich Karl Freiherr von Tettenborn (1778-1840), a general in the Napoleonic Wars.

Joseph Georg Friedrich Ernst Karl, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg (1789-1868) succeeded his father as Duke after his death in 1834. In 1817 he married Amelia of W�rttemberg, a daughter of Duke Louis of W�rttemberg. They had six daughters.