Felix Schlesinger (German 1833-1910)

Feeding the Cat
oil on panel, signed lower left "F. Schlesinger"
Size: 18 ¾ x 14 ⅝ in (with frame 27 x 22 ¾ in)
J19577

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Felix Schlesinger was born into an artistic family in the city of Hamburg, Germany in 1833. Both Felix and his brother Karl were sent to study at the recently opened Preparatory School for Artists in 1848. The school was run by Frederich Heimerdinger who trained at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf under Theodor Hilderbrandt, a historical genre painter. Felix and his brother were two of Heimerdinger's first students. By 1850 Felix had transferred to the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, his old teacher's alma mater. While there he also had private classes with Rudolf Jordan, whose work focused on narrative genre scenes, typically showing moral or comic dilemmas. Within a few years of arriving in Dusseldorf, Felix Schlesinger moved again to Antwerp to study with Ferdinandus de Braekeler, another genre painter who specialized in humour.
In the mid-1850’s Schlesinger moved to Paris to study with Eugène Isabey, an artist who had found success in producing historical genre paintings and marine subjects. Under Isabey’s influence, Schlesinger began to establish his aesthetic as a genre painter. This period in Paris saw the exhibition of controversial Realist Painting at the Paris Salon. Gustave Courbet exhibited The Stonebreakers and Burial at Ornns, both flooding the public and the press with commentary. This new direction away from Romanticism towards Realism and a resurgence in interest in Dutch still-life and 17th-century Dutch genre paintings, would likely have inspired Schlesinger to maintain his interest in painting genre subjects.
Schlesinger left Paris in 1861, initially settling in Frankfurt and then shortly after moving to Munich where he finally settled. He successfully established himself as a genre painter and exhibited with regularity in Munich, Dresden, Vienna, and Berlin. His best-known subjects were of family scenes and daily county life. Early subjects and style leaned towards the narrative images he would have learned at school, but he evolved to have a more Realist feeling in his work, likely due to the influence of his time spent in Paris. After settling in Munich, we see his style becoming more naturalistic and expressive as he became more comfortable with his subject.
While there are no direct records, it is suggested that Schlesinger married in the 1860s and had several children. The children which appear in his paintings are often the same and appear at different ages, supporting the theory that he used his own family as many of his models. The artist’s calm and contented scenes with children at play or in domestic settings became famous throughout Europe and the United States. The American market provided Schlesinger with many new clients, and his paintings found their way into collections throughout the country.
Felix Schlesinger died in 1910 at the age of 77. His paintings can still be found in many public collections, including the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam, the Kunsthalle of Hamburg, and the Milwaukee Art Museum in the United States.