Victor Müller (painter, 1830)

Victor Müller
portrait by Wilhelm Leibl , around 1870

Victor Müller , occasionally Viktor Müller , (born March 29, 1830 in Frankfurt am Main , † December 21, 1871 in Munich ) was a German painter.

Life

Victor Müller was the son of the Frankfurt doctor Valentin Christian Müller and his wife Charlotte, b. Schmid. His cousin Luise Marianne Bansa was married to the painter Carl Morgenstern .

He grew up in an upper class environment. After finishing school, he enrolled at the Städelsche Kunstinstitut in 1845 and became a student of Jakob Becker , Friedrich Maximilian Hessemer , Johann David Passavant and Johann Nepomuk Zwerger , through whom he came to appreciate the works of the Nazarenes .

Müller got to know the artists Alfred Rethel and Moritz von Schwind personally as a student , but joined the naturalists. In the autumn of 1848 he went on an extensive study trip, which first took him to Antwerp . There he studied and copied works by Anthony van Dyck and Peter Paul Rubens . In March 1850 he settled in Paris . According to his own admission, he went to the Louvre every day to “look for a fresh poetic direction”. There he developed a preference for Domenico Fetti , Raffael , Tizian and Paolo Veronese , but also admired the works of his contemporaries, such as Gustave Courbet , Eugène Delacroix and Jean-François Millet . His sketches and studies of the landscape clearly show a closeness to the Barbizon school . In 1855 he participated - with the support of his teacher Thomas Couture - with his picture L'homme, le sommeil, le rêve at the Paris World Exhibition .

In 1858 he returned to Frankfurt without losing his close contacts with his French colleagues. Most likely at Müller's invitation, Gustave Courbet came to Frankfurt that same year, where he spent half a year and was in intensive artistic exchange with Müller and other Frankfurt painters. At Courbet's intercession, Müller exhibited five works at the Paris Salon in 1867 .

Half-act of a young girl, 1861, Städel Museum, Frankfurt

During these years he created his monumental picture The Forest Nymph , which he completed in 1863 and with which he caused a sensation and divided criticism. In 1865 Müller went on a journey of several weeks to Amsterdam , where he was inspired by Rembrandt's work , The Hague and Scheveningen . Back in Frankfurt, after reading Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen ( Franz Grillparzer ), he created his picture Hero and Leander .

In 1865 Müller settled in Munich . Here he gathered a group of younger artists around himself - including Wilhelm Leibl , Hans Thoma , Otto Scholderer , Louis Eysen and Karl Haider - from whose midst the Leibl Circle later grew. Through Leibl, Müller made the acquaintance of the publisher Friedrich Bruckmann , on whose behalf he painted a Shakespeare cycle . Müller preferred girls' models, including Cella Berteneder , who later became Hans Thoma's wife.

In 1868 Müller married Ida Scholderer, a daughter of his teacher and friend Johann Christian Scholderer, in Frankfurt . With her he had a son, who later became a doctor, Otto Victor Müller (* 1870). In 1869, the Munich International Exhibition chose Müller as a member of its jury. In this position he favored French modern painting.

Victor Müller died on December 21, 1871 in Munich at the age of 41.

Works

• L'homme, le sommeil et le rêve (lost), around 1852–1854
• Knights and Nymphs (Frankfurt am Main, private collection), around 1855, oil on panel, 26 × 35 cm
• French landscape (valley with trees) (Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut ), oil on canvas, 64.7 cm × 81.5 cm
• Alte Mainbrücke im Winter (private collection), 1858–59, oil on panel, 27.9 × 40.9 cm
• Snow White dancing with the dwarfs (Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut), oil on canvas, 43.5 × 71 cm
• Portrait of the painter Otto Scholderer (Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut), 1861, oil on canvas, 36 cm × 48 cm
• Half nude of a young girl (Rote Marie) (Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut), 1861, oil on canvas, 72 cm × 56.5 cm
• Landscape scene from Victor Hugo's Les misérables (Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut), oil on canvas, 154 cm × 279 cm
• Forest nymph (Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut), 1862, oil on canvas, 277.3 cm × 228.5 cm
• Hero and Leander (Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut), 1863, oil on canvas, 158 cm × 300 cm
• Girl (Sophie Stiebel) with Pinscher (Winterthur, Museum Oskar Reinhart ), 1863, oil on canvas, 105 cm × 76 cm
• Lamentation of Adonis (Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut), 1864, oil on canvas, 125.4 cm × 90.7 cm
• Hamlet and Horatio at the grave of Ophelia (Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut), oil on canvas, 212 cm × 154 cm
• Ophelia am Weidenbaum am Bach (Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut), oil on canvas, 210 cm × 154 cm
• Salome with the head of Johannes (Berlin, Alte Nationalgalerie ), 1870, oil on canvas, 78.5 × 66 cm
• Flower Girl (Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut), 1871, oil on canvas, 56.2 cm × 91.4 cm
• Romeo and Juliet (Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen , Neue Pinakothek ), 1869–1871, oil on canvas, 213 × 156 cm

literature

• Friedrich Pecht:  Müller, Viktor . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1885, pp. 679-681.
• Evelyn Lehmann:  Müller, Viktor. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 478 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Victor Müller, paintings and drawings , exhibition cat. Städelsches Kunstinstitut and Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt am Main 1973
• Evelyn Lehmann: The Frankfurt painter Victor Müller, 1830-1871 , Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-7829-0169-X
• René Hartmann, Eva Knels: Müller, Victor (Christian) , in: France Nerlich, Bénédicte Savoy (ed.): Pariser apprenticeship years. A lexicon for training German painters in the French capital. Vol. II: 1844-1871. De Gruyter, 2015, pp. 170–175, ISBN 9783110314779 .
• Simona Hurst, Arlette Camion: Les lettres parisiennes du peintre Victor Müller , PU Paris-Sorbonne, Paris 2015, ISBN 978-2-84050-983-7

Web links

Commons : Victor Müller  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Victor Müller in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Year of birth according to NDB, the ADB names the year 1829.