Anton Heinrich Dieffenbach
German, 1831-1914
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Anton Heinrich Dieffenbach was a German landscape and genre painter; noted for his portrayals of cute children.
He moved to Straßburg with his parents in 1840 and took lessons from a local artist named Charles Duhamel. With Duhamel's recommendation, he was able to go to Paris and study with the sculptor, James Pradier. Following Pradier's death in 1852, he returned to Germany and settled in Wiesbaden and decided to devote himself entirely to painting.
After only a year, he relocated 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.
For several years, he was a member of the progressive artists' association, Malkasten (paintbox). His choice of subject matter was strongly influenced by Ludwig Knaus, although he was never one of Knaus' students. His painting "Ein Tag vor der Hochzeit" (A Day Before the Wedding) was created as a kind of homage to one of Knaus' best known works ("The Golden Wedding"). He made two copies, one of which was acquired for King Charles I of Württemberg. The other was sold in the United States in 1868.
In 1863, after a brief period of military service, he settled in Paris and lived there until the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. At that time, he went to Switzerland then, after the war, to Berlin. In 1897, he returned to the city of his youth, Straßburg.
He was named an honorary member of the "Association of Straßburg Artists" and spent his summer months in the Vosges, where he made numerous sketches that he turned into oils at his studio. His paintings from this period consist almost entirely of landscapes.