German School Anton Heinrich Dieffenbach Strasbourg

Large oil on canvas mounted on panel by Anton Heinrich DIEFFENBACH signed lower left and dated 1903 format without frame 144cm x 58cm ., gilt frame With restorations . Anton Heinrich Dieffenbach (February 4, 1831, Wiesbaden – November 29, 1914, Le Hohwald) was a German genre and landscape painter, known for his depictions of cute children . moved to Strasbourg with his parents in 1840 and took classes with a local artist, Charles Duhamel. On his recommendation, he was able to go to Paris and study with the sculptor James Pradier. After Pradier's death in 1852, he returned to Germany and settled in Wiesbaden, where he decided to devote himself entirely to painting. Only a year later, he moved to Düsseldorf, where he studied intermittently at the Kunstakademie from 1856 to 1857 with Christian Köhler. He also took private lessons from Karl Ferdinand Sohn and Rudolf Jordan. He was a member of the progressive artists' association Malkasten (Paint Box) for several years. His choice of subjects was strongly influenced by Ludwig Knaus, although he was never his student. His painting "Ein Tag vor der Hochzeit" (One Day Before the Wedding) was created as a tribute to one of Knaus's most famous works ("The Golden Wedding"). He made two copies, one of which was acquired for King Charles I of Württemberg. The other was sold to the United States in 1868. In 1863, after a brief period of military service, he moved to Paris and lived there until the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. He then went to Switzerland, and after the war, to Berlin. In 1897, he returned to Strasbourg, the city of his youth. Named an honorary member of the Association of Strasbourg Artists, he spent his summers in the Vosges Mountains, where he made numerous sketches that he transformed into oils in his studio. His paintings from this period are almost exclusively landscapes.