Henry Guillaume Schlesinger
French, 1814–1893
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Henri-Guillaume Schlesinger, originally Wilhelm Heinrich Schlesinger was a French portrait and genre painter of German birth. He was especially known for his lively and sensitive depictions of young women.
He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, and was originally active in that city. He then moved to Paris, where he participated in the Salon from 1840 to 1889 and received two medals.
During a visit to Istanbul in 1837, he was commissioned to do several official paintings of Sultan Mahmud II, including a large equestrian portrait and one of the Sultan wearing Western-style clothing, which is now on display at the Topkapi Palace Museum. One was donated to King Louis-Philippe by Mustafa Reşid Pasha, who was then serving as Ambassador to France, and may now be seen at Versailles.
His painting "The Five Senses" was purchased by Empress Eugénie in 1865. The following year, he was named a Chevalier in the Legion of Honor and became a French citizen in 1870, just before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. During the war and the subsequent Commune, he lived in London.
In addition to oil paintings, he was a watercolorist and painted miniatures on ivory.
