Franz Seraph Hanfstaengl (1 March 1804 in near

Bad Tölz Bad Tölz (; Bavarian: ''Däiz'') is a town in Bavaria, Germany and the administrative center of the Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen district. History Archaeology has shown continuous occupation of the site of Bad Tölz since the retreat of the gla ...

– 18 April 1877 in

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

) was a

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

n painter,

lithographer Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German ...

, and photographer.

Life

Hanfstaengl originated from a commoner family and in 1816 came on the recommendation of the town-school-teachers into the drawing-class of the leave-day school at Munich led by Hermann Joseph Mitterer. He was instructed in lithography, he had contact with

Alois Senefelder Johann Alois Senefelder (6 November 177126 February 1834) was a German actor and playwright who invented the printing technique of lithography in the 1790s.Meggs, Philip B. A History of Graphic Design. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1998. p 146 Actor ...

and studied from 1819 to 1825 at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. In 1826, he went to Dresden and began his great work, completed in 1852, of copying in lithograph the canvases of the Dresden Gallery. Between 1835 and 1852, Hanfstaengl brought out about 200 lithographic reproductions of masterworks from the

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

picture-gallery, and published them in a portfolio. When he returned to Munich, he left his establishment at Dresden to his brothers Max and Hans. In 1833, he founded in Munich a lithographic establishment of his own, which he operated until 1868, and to which he later attached a fine art printing shop and (in 1853) a photographic workshop. Hanfstaengl won for himself much popularity as the portrait lithographer of Munich society, being nicknamed 'Count Litho'. Later, he became court photographer and produced portraits of distinguished persons, amongst others of the young King Ludwig II, of

Franz Liszt Franz Liszt (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor and teacher of the Romantic music, Romantic period. With a diverse List of compositions by Franz Liszt, body of work spanning more than six ...

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and

Empress Elisabeth of Austria Elisabeth (born Duchess Elisabeth Amalie Eugenie in Bavaria; 24 December 1837 – 10 September 1898), nicknamed Sisi or Sissi, was Empress of Austria and List of Hungarian consorts, Queen of Hungary from her marriage to Franz Joseph I of Austri ...

. In 1858, Hanfstaengl tutored renowned French photographer

Antoine Samuel Adam-Salomon Antoine Samuel Adam-Salomon (9 January 1818 – 28 April 1881) was a French Sculpture, sculptor and Photography, photographer. Early career Antoine Samuel Adam-Salomon was born to a French Jews, French Jewish family on 9 January 1818 in La ...

. He influenced his brother-in-law, the Austrian physician, inventor and politician Norbert Pfretzschner senior in the evolving of the photographic dry-plate in 1866. He was married to Franziska Wegmeier (1809–1860), by whom he became the father of Edgar Hanfstaengl. Another family member, Erwin von Hanfstaengl, in 1873 married the opera-singer Marie Schröder.Meyer's Konversations-Lexikon, 1888-90.

Gallery

Franz Liszt 2.jpg,

Franz Hanfstaengl - Clara Schumann (1857).jpg,

Clara Schumann Clara Josephine Schumann (; ; née Wieck; 13 September 1819 – 20 May 1896) was a German pianist, composer, and piano teacher. Regarded as one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic music, Romantic era, she exerted her influence o ...

Richard Wagner 2.jpg,

Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most o ...

Sofia Carlota da Baviera.1.jpg, Duchess Sophie Charlotte in Bavaria Johann Friedrich Overbeck 2.jpg, Johann Friedrich Overbeck

Notes

References

* Heß, Helmut, ''The publishing-house of Franz Hanfstaengl and early photographic art-reproduction.'' Das Kunstwerk und sein Abbild. (Akademischer Verlag, Munich 1999) * Gebhardt, Heinz, ''Franz Hanfstaengl/Von der Lithographie zur Photographie'' (From Lithography to Photography). (C. H. Beck, München 1984).

External links

* * Literature of and about Franz Seraph Hanfstaengl in the Catalogue of the German National Librar

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hanfstaengl, Franz Seraph German lithographers German portrait photographers 1804 births 1877 deaths Academy of Fine Arts, Munich alumni 19th-century German painters 19th-century German male artists German male painters 19th-century German photographers Photographers from Bavaria