'', 1872–1875
Career Menzel was born to German parents in Breslau,
Prussian Silesia (now
Wrocław,
Poland), on 8 December 1815. His father was a lithographer and intended to educate his son as a professor, but did not thwart his taste for art. After resigning his teaching post, Menzel senior set up a lithographic workshop in 1818. In 1830 the family moved to Berlin, and in 1832 Adolph was forced to take over the lithographic business on the death of his father. In 1833, he studied briefly at the
Berlin Academy of Art, where he drew from plaster casts and ancient sculptures; thereafter Menzel was self-taught. Through these works, Menzel established his claim to be considered one of the first, if not actually the first, of the illustrators of his day in his own line. Menzel's fame came from his illustrations of the 18th-century Prussian monarch, Frederick the Great. As well as dedication to adding historical accuracy and attention to detail. Menzel also made sure to do research on the items he was painting. From 1840 and onward Menzel became admirable for his small paintings and drawings. In which he depicted his unconventional ideas. '', 1845 In the meantime, Menzel had also begun to study, unaided, the art of painting, and he soon produced a great number and variety of pictures. His paintings consistently demonstrated keen observation and honest workmanship in subjects dealing with the life and achievements of Frederick the Great, and scenes of everyday life, such as
In the Tuileries,
The Ball Supper, and
At Confession. Among those considered most important of these works are
Iron Rolling Mill (1872–1875) and
The Market-place at Verona. When invited to paint
The Coronation of William I at Koenigsberg, he produced an exact representation of the ceremony without regard to the traditions of official painting. During Menzel's life, his paintings were appreciated by
Otto von Bismarck and William I, and after his death they were appropriated for use as electoral posters by
Adolf Hitler. If these historical illustrations anticipated the qualities of early
Impressionism, it is paintings such as
The French Window and
The Palace Garden of Prince Albert, both painted in the mid- 1840s, that now appeal as "among the most freely observed of mid-nineteenth century images." Such
genre paintings evidence associations with
French and
English art. Though he was primarily an excellent draughtsman, art historian
Julius Meier-Graefe considered him to be a "proto-impressionist" painter, whose graphic work hindered his painterly potentials. Private drawings and watercolors made of dead and dying soldiers in 1866 on the battlefields of the
Austro-Prussian War are unsparing in their realism, and have been described by art historian Marie Ursula Riemann-Reyher as "unique in German art of the time." ==Later years==