Antique painting by Joseph Winkler (Germany, 1839-1877).

Antique painting by Joseph Winkler (Germany, 1839-1877).

Size: 33.5 cm W x 28.5 cm L x 3 cm H

Two Putti on Cloud with musical instruments and doves, oil on canvas, signed lower right and dated 1860.

From the Estate of Bowdoin Professor William Collins Watterson.

Biography:

Joseph W., landscape painter, was born around 1839 in Traunstein in Upper Bavaria. At the end of the 1850s he moved to Munich and caused a great stir with his significant gifts. He only did a short internship at the Academy of Fine Arts and tried to train on his own. Anyone who saw his mostly quick charcoal drawings was amazed at the lively sense of beauty and the rich imagination that spoke from them, but at the same time he also had to notice that they lacked formal training and security. W. turned down several offers to support him in his training and only joined the painter Erxleben from Baden, with whom he made nature studies in the Bavarian Alps for a while. Winkler's first debut at the Munich Art Association was a disaster because his landscape with biblical staffage was not well received. A subsequent oil painting, depicting the Dachstein in the Salzkammergut, was received more favorably, and when he exhibited a huge cartoon the following year: the Etal Bear Cave and a cheerful landscape decorated with the Baptism in the Jordan, recognition was not lacking. Unfortunately, W. then came up with the idea of ​​inventing a new color technique and establishing a new color scale. This ruined his best time and got him into trouble, from which he was rescued by the intervention of a British lady who hired him to travel around the world. The travelers, however, only got as far as Italy and Malta. In the winter of 1869 W. lived in Rome, where Adolf Stahr met him. W. returned to Munich in the autumn of the same year.