Background
Constantin Rosenthal was born in 1820, into a Jewish merchant family in Pest, part of the Austrian Empire at the time.
Constantin Rosenthal was born in 1820, into a Jewish merchant family in Pest, part of the Austrian Empire at the time.
Rosenthal joined the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna when he was only 17 years old. Then Constantin graduated from the Academy of Belle Arte in Paris, where he came into contact with young Romanian foot soldiers and was convinced by John I. Negulici, a painter, to go to Bucharest in 1842. Between 1842 and 1845 he studied in Paris under rather difficult material conditions.
Rosenthal arrived in Bucharest, the capital of Wallachia, around 1842, where he was probably commissioned to paint the first in a long series of boyar's portraits. He was introduced to the liberal-radical circles by Negulici, becoming very close to C.A. Rosetti. Dissatisfied with his oil painting technique, he left for France in late 1844 and began attending meetings of Wallachian and Moldavian students who expressed nationalist and radical ideas. He was accompanied by Rosetti, who praised Rosenthal's work ethic.
In 1846, the profit from Constantin's works afforded him a trip to England; upon his return to Paris, he was informed of his family's financial destitution, and left for Budapest in early 1847, only to leave in summer for Mehadia, and then, in August, for Bucharest. Rosenthal again joined the radical circles, that time as a member of the secret society Frăţia, which was by then masking itself as a literary society presided by Iancu Văcărescu, and was commissioned by Vasile Alecsandri to paint a portrait of the deceased Elena Negri after a daguerreotype. He also painted the portrait of Anica Manu, the wife of Aga Iancu Manu.
Upon the outbreak of the revolution, Rosenthal was spared the first wave of repression ordered by Prince Gheorghe Bibescu - given the fact that he carried an Austrian passport. On June 18, 1848, soon after the Provisional Government took hold, Rosenthal applied for Wallachian citizenship; the document giving him the right of naturalization justified it as "taking in view his talent and the active part he played in the revolution." The Government assigned him the designing of a triumphal arch in Bucharest, one meant to mark the success of the revolution, and, probably, of a Statue of Liberty.
In late September, after Ottoman troops intervened against the revolution, most radicals were arrested and transported on board small vessels on the Danube, to exile in various locations. Rosenthal made public his request to join them but was answered that Austrian protection still applied to him, and, although he requested to be viewed as a Wallachian, was denied permission to board. Subsequently, he and Rosetti's wife Maria followed the ships on shore from Giurgiu to Sviniţa, where they convinced the Austrian mayor to disarm the Ottoman guards and allow the prisoners to go free.
Constantin returned to Pest-Buda, which was still witnessing the Hungarian revolution at the time, left for Paris in May 1850, and subsequently joined Romanian exiles in carrying out propaganda work. His most celebrated paintings, two national personifications — "Revolutionary Romania", which was also a portrait of Maria Rosetti, and "Romania Breaking off Her Chains on the Field of Liberty", — date from that period.
Soon without money, Rosenthal left for Switzerland, and lived for a while in late 1850 in the town of Porrentruy, before leaving for Fribourg, then Chur, in the first days of 1851. In Graz until July, where he began receiving some attention from critics, he decided to return to Wallachia in an attempt to rekindle the radical movement. His plan was divulged by spies of the Second French Republic, who read Rosenthal's correspondence in Paris; the Austrians arrested the painter during his presence in Pest-Buda, citing his "imprudent political statements." Pressured to reveal his connections and refusing to comply, Rosenthal was tortured to death; his body was never returned to his family.
Constantin Daniel Rosenthal adhered to the artistic traditions of Romanticism.
Constantin was a member of the Romanian Society of the European Capital of Arts.
Quotes from others about the person
[Rosenthal was] one of the best and the most loyal people that God created after His image. He died for Romania, for its liberties; he died for his Romanian friends. [...] This friend, this son, this martyr of Romania is an Israelite. His name was Daniel Rosenthal.
