Figure 1.--This Duveneck painting is known as 'Portrait of a Boy, 1882' and probably painted in Germany. Duveneck opened a school in Munich, and in the village of Polling in Bavaria (1878). His students, known as the 'Duveneck Boys'. We are guessing that the portrait was taken at this time. An internet assessment reads, "Duveneck was one of many Americans who studied art in Munich rather than Paris to avoid the rigid structure of French academies. This image of a young boy in seventeenth-century costume is typical of his many rapidly painted portrait studies composed during a second trip to Germany. The artist's energetic style is apparent in the vigorous brushwork and dark tones, gleaned from his German teachers and from seventeenth-century Dutch painting." The artistic assessment seems accurate, but the clothing assessment is absurd. The boy is wearing a sailor suit with an embroidered anchor on the dicky. European boys, especially Germany boys did not, unlike American boys, have their hair curled.

Frank Duveneck (1848-1919) was an American artist best known for his portraits. Frank was born in Covington, Kentucky (1848). His father was German immigrant Bernhard Decker. Frank lost his father in a cholera epidemic when he was only a year old. His mother remarried Joseph Duveneck. Frank showed an artistic bent from an early age. He began studying art during the Civil War under Johann Schmitt (1863). He then apprenticed to a German firm of church decorators. He would later paint an image of an appretice. Covington was just across the Ohio River from the much larger city of Cincinnati, Ohio which had a substantial German community. Duveneck as a German and Catholic was nrever fully accepted in the Cincannati artictic community. He decided to study abroad (1869). And he chose Munich, Germany, at the time a rival to Paris as an artistic center. He studied under Wilhelm von Diez and Wilhelm Leibl at the Royal Academy of Munich. He developed a dark, realistic style that was very different than contemporary standars heavily influenced by the Hudson River School. Other young American artists like William Merritt Chase, John Henry Twachtman, Willis Seaver Adams and Walter Shirlaw were also experimenting with new styles. Duveneck opened a school in Munich, and in the village of Polling in Bavaria (1878). His students, known as the 'Duveneck Boys'. The portrait here seems to have been painted at this time (figure 1). Like many European artists he experimented with orientalism. Omr of these images was a 'Turkish page' (1876). The Ottoman Empire was in decline at the time, but Europeans were still fascinaged with it. Some Europeans actually went to the Middle East. The French had their North African colonies. Orientalism was much more common in Europe than America. As best we can tell, Duveneck's oriental works were simply flights of fancy. Unlike his work in Italy, his oriental paintings were purely imaginary. This was the case with artists like Duveneck who painted Ottoman harem scenes--a long way from Covington Kentucky. More realistic is his painting of a 'Cobbler's appentice' (1877). Duveneck himself was apprenticed as a boy. We think he may be a German boy. There are a lot of historical mention of appretices. Surely more realistic and therefore useful is an image of who we believe to be an actual apprentice. When Duvenbeck was a boy in the 19th century the apprentice system was still very common. This had declined by the 20th century. The expansion of public education was a factor. Duvenbeck was on his way to becoming more of a European artist, marrying Elizabeth Boott, a young artist he had tought (1886). She was born in Biston, but raised near Florence. They set up a home in Italy. They had a son, Frank Boott Duveneck, who became an environmetalist and multi-culturist. She succumed to pneumonia in Paris (1888). Duveneck was hear broken. He briyght Frank back to America. He became much less active in his artistic endevors.

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Created: 12:34 AM 12/15/2016
Last updated: 12:34 AM 12/15/2016