Christian Herter was born on January 8, 1840, in Stuttgart, Germany. He was the son of another Christian Herter, a German woodcarver and cabinetmaker of repute, who had a furniture establishment in Stuttgart. His mother was Christiana, nee Schaeffer, who when she married Herter was a widow with one son, Gustave, to whom her husband gave the Herter name.
Christian was fifteen when he entered the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. He then studied at the Stuttgart Polytechnic.
Christian's brother, Gustave, was the first to emigrate to America. He established a business, under the caption, “Gustave Herter, Decorations. ” Christian later joined Gustave in New York. As a designer apparently first at Tiffany’s and later in Gustave’s atelier, he showed such brilliant endowment that about 1868 his brother sent him to Paris for further study. There he worked under Pierre Victor Galland, whose success as a decorative artist was broadly based on knowledge of architecture, sculpture, and painting. Young Herter's lifelong desire to become a painter was intensified by his contacts in Galland’s studio with most of the distinguished brushmen of France. This ambition he sacrificed, however, out of a sense of responsibility toward his family, for the surer returns or business.
Returning to New York in 1870, Christian bought Gustave out, and during the ensuing decade, by his originality, independence, business acumen, and many-sided artistic skill, he advanced the reputation of Herter Brothers to the front rank. Many great houses unconditionally intrusted to him for their interior decorations and fittings. For the Vanderbilt houses (Fifth Avenue at Fifty-first Street) Herter was responsible for both exterior and interior plans, designing also most of the furniture, textiles, mosaics, and carvings. It was his last contract. Retiring with a fortune, about 1880, he returned to Paris to study under Jean Paul Laurens, hoping at last to realize his old dream of success as a painter, but after about a year he contracted tuberculosis and came home to die.
A man of great physical beauty, magnetism, and charm, musical, well-read in the literature of four languages, socially gifted, Christian Herter was as popular among his workmen as with his fellow designers or his millionaire patrons.
In 1864, Christian Herter married Mary Miles, daughter of Dr. Archibald Miles of Cleveland.
