After early art instruction from his father, decorative painter and illustrator
Franz von Seitz, Rudolf enrolled in 1857 at the
Academy of Fine Arts, Munich where his teachers included
Karl von Piloty and
Hermann Anschütz. He began with genre paintings such
In Peter Vischer’s Gießhütte zu Nürnberg (trans. ''In Peter Vischer's Foundry in
Nuremberg''), but then turned primarily to illustration, applied arts and decorative painting. Seitz's work ranged from providing the ornamental frames and print decorations in the rococo style for magnificent editions of
Goethe's Faust and
Schiller's Glocke, with illustrations by
Sándor Liezen-Mayer, to elaborately painting the ceiling of the Bavarian court bakers and designing their bread stamps (''''). , 1867, p. 501) Seitz preferred the style of the German late Renaissance and Rococo, In 1878, together with architect
Gabriel von Seidl, Seitz founded the design company "Das Renaissancemagazin Seitz & Seidl", where soon also worked and took over the management of the interior decoration studio. The successful company existed until 1898, and its projects included the new
Bavarian National Museum. Seitz could design a complete range of interior furnishings: furniture, wall/ceiling paintings and ornamentation, chandeliers, windows, tapestries, .... Along with his father, Seitz designed much of the interior, including many porcelain objects, for the
Linderhof Palace of
King Ludwig II. depicting the Holy Trinity, Mary (right), her mother Anna (left), and the apostles.
Richard Wagner asked Seitz to design "characterful, poetic and simple" costumes for the 1882 premiere of
Parsifal. Seitz's spent a year on the designs, but they were ultimately rejected by Wagner as "too bejewelled or too reminiscent of ballet and masquerade". In 1883 Seitz was appointed curator at the
National Museum in Munich, and in 1888 he became a professor at the
Munich Academy of Fine Arts, where he established an academic program in art restoration. Among his students were ,
Julius Diez,
Max Frey, ,
Richard Throll, and
Rihards Zariņš. Seitz's work from this era includes the large
fresco in the
apse of
St. Anna im Lehel church in Munich in 1897 and many other ceiling and wall paintings, illustrations in
Jugend (magazine) such as
Sommer (1898, No. 37, p. 612),
Bismark (1898, No. 3, cover), and a 1905 bare-bottomed sculpture of
Saint Florian adorning a water fountain in
Bad Tölz. == Personal life ==