Carl Spitzweg

Spitzweg was born in Unterpfaffenhofen, near Munich, Bavaria, the second of three sons of Franziska (née Schmutzer) and Simon Spitzweg.[1] His father, a wealthy merchant, had Carl trained as a pharmacist. He attained his qualification from the University of Munich but, while recovering from an illness, he took up painting.

Spitzweg was self-taught as an artist, starting out by copying the works of Flemish masters. He contributed his first work to satiric magazines. Upon receiving an inheritance in 1833, he was able to dedicate himself to painting.

Later, Spitzweg visited European art centers in Prague, Venice, Paris, London, and Belgium studying the works of various artists and refining his technique and style. His later paintings and drawings are often humorous genre works. Many of his paintings depict sharply characterized eccentrics, for example The Bookworm (1850) and The Hypochondriac (c. 1865, in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich).

His paintings inspired the musical comedy Das kleine Hofkonzert by Edmund Nick.

Playing Piano, an etching by Spitzweg, was found as part of the Munich Art Hoard.[2]

Spitzweg is buried in the Alter Südfriedhof in Munich.

In the late 1930s an art forgery case in Germany involved 54 paintings which had been passed off as Spitzweg originals. They had been painted by a Traunstein copyist named Toni who worked from reproductions and picture postcards. Toni signed the works with his own name as "after Spitzweg", but fraudsters later removed his name and artificially aged the paintings in order to sell them as originals. At the Stuttgart Criminal Court Assizes the conspirators were jailed for up to ten years for the swindle.[3]

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  The Bookworm, original 1850, Museum Georg Schäfer. Two other exemplars exist.
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  Music-making Hermit before his Rocky Abode, c. 1856–1858
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  In the Harem, after 1855, Museum Georg Schäfer
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  The Poor Poet, 1839, Neue Pinakothek
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  Newspaper reader in his backyard, c. 1845–1858
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  The butterfly hunter, 1840, a depiction from the era of butterfly collection
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  The Letter Carrier in the Rose Valley, c. 1858–18
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  Gnome Watching Railway Train, c. 1848
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  The Attic, c. 1840s
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  The Hermit Asleep
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  The Painter in a Forest Clearing, Lying under an Umbrella, c. 1850
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  Arrival of the Stagecoach, c. 1859
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  The Serenade, 1854
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  The Intercepted Love Letter, c. 1860

• Murray, P. & L. (1996). Dictionary of Art and Artists. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-051300-0.

Wikisource has the text of a 1905 New International Encyclopedia article about "Carl Spitzweg".

• Media related to Carl Spitzweg at Wikimedia Commons
• Biography and selected paintings of Carl Spitzweg
• The Spitzweg Game
• Spitzweg Gallery at MuseumSyndicate
• Milwaukee Art Museum has a large Spitzweg collection
• German masters of the nineteenth century: paintings and drawings from the Federal Republic of Germany, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on Carl Spitzweg (no. 87–90)