Adolf von Menzel

Flute Concert at Sanssouci Palace
Adolf von Menzel, 1850-52

Iron Rolling Mill
Adolf von Menzel, 1875

Background

bourgeois - son of headmaster and lithographer

Studies

father; Berlin art academy (Akademie der Künste, 1833)

Career

1829 - contributes 8 lithographs to Geschichte des preussischen Staates (History of the Prussian State, Breslau)

1830 - moves to Berlin; runs lithography business after father's death

1834 - joins Association of Berlin Artists (Verein Berliner Künstler)

1837 - begins series of 400 drawings for Franz Kugler's History of Friedrich the Great (Leipzig, 1840)

1849 - begins series of paintings based on life of Friedrich the Great

1851 - begins series of 436 lithographs for The Army of Friedrich the Great in their Uniforms (1851-57, Berlin)

1855 - visits Exposition universelle (Paris)

1856 - appointed professor at Berlin academy

1867 - visits Exposition universelle (Paris)

1868- exhibits Coronation of King William I in Königserg (1861-65) at Paris Salon

1872 - visits Königshütte iron rolling mill

1884 - one-man show at Nationalgalerie (Berlin)

1885 - one-man exhibition at City Pavilion (Paris)

1889 - exhibits at Exposition universelle (Paris)

1903 - one-man exhibition in London

Travels

Vienna, Prague (1852); Paris (1855, 1867, 1868); Netherlands (1876)

Important Artworks

Living Room with the Artist's Sister, Emilie, 1847 (Neue Pinokothek, Munich)

Berlin-Potsdam Railway, 1847 (Nationalgalerie, Berlin)

Funeral of the Fallen in the March Uprising, 1848 (unfinished; Kunsthalle, Hamburg)

Bonsoir Messieurs! (Friedrich the Great in Lissa), 1858 (Kunsthalle, Hamburg)

Afternoon in the Tuileries Garden, 1867 (National Gallery, London; painted in Berlin)

Readings

Fried, Michael. Menzel’s Realism: Art and Embodiment in Nineteenth-Century Berlin. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002

Menzel, Adolph. Adolph Menzel, 1815-1905: Between Romanticism and Impressionism. Exhibition catalogue. London and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996

Images