Gustav Graef: 9 cool facts

Gustav Graef (14 December 1821 – 6 January 1895) was a German painter, primarily of portraits and historical subjects.

Graef was born in Königsberg. In 1842, he entered the University of Königsberg, where he was an on the go member of the Student Corps and produced his first lithographs. His training as a painter began in Düsseldorf gone Theodor Hildebrandt and Wilhelm von Schadow at the Royal Academy. He made several assay trips to Antwerp, Paris, Munich and Italy.

Upon his compensation to Königsberg, he married a former acquaintance from his drawing class, the painter and lithographer Franziska Liebreich (1824–1893), who came from a prominent Jewish family. One of their sons, Botho, became a noted art historian. Their daughter Sabine married the painter Reinhold Lepsius and became a renowned painter herself.

In 1849, he established the concord to paint frescoes in the south sports ground hall of the Neues Museum; designed by Wilhelm von Kaulbach, depicting Widukind’s reconciliation once Charlemagne. This necessitated a touch to Berlin and was followed by a commission to paint four scenes from the Labors of Hercules for the Altes Museum. After 1862, he focused upon idealized female portraits, which brought him good commercial success. He became a zealot of the Prussian Academy of the Arts in 1880.^{[citation needed]}

At the zenith of his fame, in 1885, he was arrested and charged past the abuse of an underage model. This became a major dislike in Berlin society, as the young girl in Ask was from a notable associates that had been agreed hospitable to Graef. He was eventually acquitted, but not without great broken to everything the parties involved. He died in Berlin, aged 73.

Media united to Gustav Graef at Wikimedia Commons