The New International Encyclopædia/Müller, Victor

MÜLLER, Victor (1829-71). A German historical painter, born in Frankfort. First instructed there at the Städel Institute by Steinle, he studied afterwards at the Antwerp Academy and under Couture in Paris. Soon, however, he became a follower of Courbet, whose technique, the reverse of Couture's, he adopted, and subsequently helped to promote in Germany. In 1858 he returned to Frankfort, where he soon attracted attention with a series of pictures, thoroughly realistic in conception and of great coloristic charm, but scarcely understood by a public accustomed to the sentimental trend of the Düsseldorf school of that period. He therefore, in 1866, removed to Munich, where such revolutionary departures from traditional treatment as the “Sleeping Wood-Nymph” (1863), or “Hero and Leander,” were more likely to be appeciated. Out of a cycle from Shakespeare, which he painted there, “Hamlet in the Graveyard” (1869) is surpassed only by the “Balcony Scene in Romeo and Juliet” (New Pinakothek, Munich). To his influence as a colorist was due not only the introduction of the tone-element into the paintings of the Munich school, but also the truer conception of historical characters and a more wholesome observation of nature among the younger generation of artists.