3-053-717 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The late F. Winterhalter, portrait-painter, 1873. Engraving from a photograph by Mr. Caldesi. 'This distinguished portrait-painter, whose death was lately recorded, had long been esteemed by an aristocratic class of patrons of his profession in our own country; but he was a native of Germany. Franz Xavier Winterhalter was born at Baden in 1805, and came to England about thirty years ago. He had already, as a Court portrait-painter, won some reputation. His first and most profitable success here was in delineating a Royal Family group of Queen Victoria, the Prince Consort, and their children, which was, by the Queen's special command, exhibited to the public in the state apartments at Buckingham Palace; an engraving of it was afterwards produced for sale, and became extremely popular. Many other portraits of Royal and Imperial personages, and of the nobility, English or foreign, have been painted by Winterhalter; they were characterised by an agreeable elegance and refinement which commended his work to fashionable sitters. The only picture of an ideal subject by him that gained much applause was one of "Florinda and her Companions Bathing in the Tagus," which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1852, and is now in the Queen's collection'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.