Eduard Theodor Ritter von Grützner (May 26, 1846 – April 2, 1925) was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 painter and professor of art especially noted for his genre paintings of monks.

Childhood

Grützner was born in 1846, the youngest of children, into a farming family in Groß-Karlowitz near Neisse

Nysa, Poland

Nysa is a town in southwestern Poland on the Nysa Kłodzka river with 47,545 inhabitants , situated in the Opole Voivodeship. It is the capital of Nysa County. It comprises the urban portion of the surrounding Gmina Nysa, a mixed urban-rural commune with a total population of 60,123 inhabitants...

, Upper Silesia

Upper Silesia

Upper Silesia is the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia. Since the 9th century, Upper Silesia has been part of Greater Moravia, the Duchy of Bohemia, the Piast Kingdom of Poland, again of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown and the Holy Roman Empire, as well as of...

 in what is now Poland. The local pastor often visited his parents' home, as his father was a prominent member of the church. He recognized early on Eduard's talent and inclination for painting. Even as a child he drew on everything that fell into his hands. The administrator of a ducal country house in the neighborhood got him paper, and eventually the pastor gained him entrance to the Gymnasium (a university preparatory school) of Neisse, and brought him in 1864 with the help of an architect Hirschberg for art education at the private school of Herman Dyck in Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

.

Studies

His tenure at the Kunstgewerbeschule

Kunstgewerbeschule

A Kunstgewerbeschule was the old name for an advanced school of applied arts in German-speaking countries. The first such schools were opened in Kassel in 1867 and Berlin and Munich in 1868 with other German towns following. They are now merged into universities....

 under Hermann Dyck, however, was only of short duration. In the first semester he transferred to the class of the Classical Art class of Johann Georg Hiltensperger and Alexander Ströhuber, where the students learned about the aesthedic ideals of antiquity.

In 1865 Grützner joined the painting class of Hermann Anschütz

Hermann Anschütz

Hermann Anschütz was a German painter and professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.Anschütz was born in Koblenz. It is traced, that he lived at Promenade Straße 1 in Munich around 1850. He died in Munich, where he was buried on the Old Southern Cemetery .-External links:* * -...

 at the Munich Academy. Meanwhile, he also sought advice and inspiration with Carl Theodor von Piloty until he was taken into his class in 1867. Piloty's class was packed with aspiring artists from around the world, from Hungary, Greece, Germany, Russia, and Poland. After three years under Piloty, Grützner left the academy.

Career

In 1870 he moved into his own studio in the garden house of Schwanthalerstraße 18 in Munich. He quickly began to produce one painting after another. He made his career in Munich and was very successful. It was reported by artist and writer Friedrich Pecht in the journal Die Kunst für Alle (Art for All) in 1886: "the painters Eduard Grützner and Ludwig Willroider were granted the title of "professor" by Luitpold, Prince Regent of Bavaria

Luitpold, Prince Regent of Bavaria

Luitpold, Prince Regent of Bavaria , was the de facto ruler of Bavaria from 1886 to 1912, due to the incapacity of his nephews, King Ludwig II and King Otto.-Early life:...

. In 1880 he was awarded the Order of Merit of St. Michael (Knight's Cross

Knight's Cross

Knight's Cross refers to a distinguishing grade or level of various orders that denotes bravery and leadership on the battlefield....

) first class. He was knighted in 1916.

Grützner as a collector

Grützner was an avid collector of art. Early on he favored pieces from the German late Gothic and early Renaissance. In the last decade of his life, but he turned from the late Middle Ages and collected art from the Far East. On his major compositions, however, he almost always included old pieces, mostly from his antique collection.

Family

In 1874 Grützner married Barbara Link, who two years later bore him a daughter, whom they named Barbara. In 1884, after ten years of marriage, his first wife died. In 1888, he became engaged to Anna Grützner Wirthmann, the daughter of a Munich garrison commander, and a short time later their son Karl Eduard was born. This second marriage was less harmonious and eventually his wife, who was some 17 years younger, left him for a Viennese

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 singer.

In his old age he sought solace in Chinese philosophy, and began to collect items from the far east and learn Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

. Occasionally he included a Buddha figure

Buddharupa

Buddharūpa is the Sanskrit and Pali term used in Buddhism for statues or models of the Buddha.-Commonalities:...

 or a Chinese vase in some of his paintings. He also painted a number of ascetic-looking cardinals, often with harsh and unsympathetic features. He died on April 2, 1925 in Munich.

Legacy

Grützner was, along with Carl Spitzweg

Carl Spitzweg

Carl Spitzweg was a German romanticist painter and poet. He is considered to be one of the most important artists of the Biedermeier era....

 and Franz von Defregger

Franz Defregger

Franz Defregger was an Austrian artist known mostly for his genre and history paintings....

, one of Munich's leading genre painters in the second half of the 19th century. The paintings Grützner is best known for combine detailed academic

Academic art

Academic art is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts, which practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism,...

 rendering with humorous and anecdotal subject matter, often depicting monks drinking.

Grützner was one of Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

's favorite painters, Albert Speer

Albert Speer

Albert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office...

 quoting him as saying of one of the artist's works that he was "greatly underrated... Believe me, this Grützner will someday be worth as much as a Rembrandt. Rembrandt himself couldn't have painted that better."