Heinrich von Angeli
Austrian, 1840-1925
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Heinrich Anton von Angeli was an Austrian history and portrait painter. His works included portraits of Queen Victoria, her eldest daughter Victoria, Princess Royal, Kaiser Wilhelm I, Benjamin Disraeli, Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, and two of Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom.
Several of his works are in the British Royal Collection, including portraits of members of the British, German, and Russian royal families. His work is also in the Wallace Collection and the Victoria and Albert Museum. He received the Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts in 1915.
Angeli was born in 1840 in Ödenburg, then part of the Austrian empire, now known as Sopron in Hungary. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and in Munich, before moving back to Vienna in 1862. From 1870 he travelled between Berlin, London, and Vienna, producing portraits.
His success at society portraiture was partly due to his facility at depicting uniforms, pearls, and other jewels. As well as royalty and politicians, he painted other notable people, such as the German chemist August Wilhelm von Hofmann. In 1877 Buckingham Palace invited Ulysses S. Grant to have his portrait painted by Angeli.
