Eduard von Grützner was a German painter. The main characters of Grützner’s genre paintings were monks, often in kitchens and pubs, shown in a humoristic way. Falstaff, a fictional character by William Shakespeare, was also portrayed by the artist many times.
Background
Eduard von Grützner was born on May 26, 1846, in Karłowice Wielkie village situated in Upper Silesia of Prussia (currently the village is on the south-west of Poland) to a peasant family with many children. He was a son of the church attender.
Grützner’s incredible painting talent was revealed in the early age by a local pastor, a frequent visitor of the Grützners’ home.
Education
Eduard von Grützner studied at the Gymnasium of Neisse.
In 1864, he entered a private Hermann Dyck’s school of arts and crafts in Munich. His tutelage by Hermann Dyck was short and soon Grützner joined the Classical Art course of Johann Georg Hiltensperger and Alexander Ströhuber. There, he explored the aesthetic of antiquity.
The following year, Eduard enrolled at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts where he became a student of the painting class of Hermann Anschütz. There, Grützner also had received painting lessons from Carl Theodor von Piloty since 1867. He left the Academy in 1870.
Career
Eduard von Grützner started his career in 1880 when he moved to Munich and founded there his private studio. Soon, he became very popular and started to receive a large number of commissions.
Six years later, the artist had a professor’s post at his alma mater, the Munich Academy of Fine Arts.
Eduard von Grützner liked to collect the pieces of art. Among the artists’ preferences were the German late Gothic and early Renaissance works, later the Far East art.
Connections
Eduard von Grützner was married twice. His first wife became Barbara Link in 1874. In two years, came their firstborn, a daughter whose name was Barbara. In 1884, the artist’s first spouse died.
Four years later, Grützner married the daughter of a Munich garrison commander who was younger than him by seventeen years. Her name was Anna Grützner Wirthmann. Soon after the marriage, Anna gave birth to Karl Eduard.
The second marriage was not of a huge success, and Anna broke with Grützner for a singer from Vienna.