Moritz von Schwind, a famous Austrian painter and graphic artist, was born in Vienna on January 21, 1801, into the family of a court secretary and the daughter of a court adviser. The family was highly educated. As a child, the boy learned to play the violin, but he was much better at drawing. His parents saw him as an employee at the imperial court, like his father, but Moritz, after graduating from the Schottengymnasium, entered the Academy of Arts in 1818. At the same time, his father died. His mother was left alone with six children. The family lived near the Church of St. Charles (Karlskirche) in the house “Zum goldenen Mondschein” (“At the Golden Moonbeam”).

Young writers and musicians, artists and painters gathered in their apartment. For example, Schwind was friends with the famous composer Franz Schubert. In his youth he attended lectures on the humanities at the University of Vienna for a time and studied drawing with Ludwig Schnorr, and then attended classes at the Academy of Fine Arts.

In 1828 Schwind went to Munich to receive further artistic education. There he worked under Cornelius, participated in the decoration of the new magnificent buildings that had just been built in the Bavarian capital, in particular he painted scenes from Tieck’s fairy tales in encaustic on the walls of the Library of the Royal Palace.

In 1833 Schwind made a trip to Rome, thinking that it would benefit his development, but he found nothing there that corresponded to the nature of his talent, and soon returned to Munich. In 1836, he created a painting on cardboard for the royal palace called “The Triumph of the Arts, Sciences and Industrial Production”, in which the main qualities of his talent – wit, thoughtfulness and inexhaustible imagination – were already clearly evident.

In 1838, he painted an oil painting: “The Wedding of the Knight Kurt”, an excellent illustration of Goethe’s poem (currently the work is in the Karlsruhe Art Gallery). Around the same time, he created sketches of scenes related to the history of Charlemagne, based on which K. Glick later painted wall paintings in the Hohenschwangau Castle (Bavaria).

In 1839, Schwind was invited to Karlsruhe to decorate the local Art Hall – Kunsthalle – with frescoes. In addition to the paintings on the walls and ceiling of this building, he painted several other remarkable works there, such as the allegorical frescoes in the meeting room of the Bavarian State Chamber and the complex composition of the Rhine with its tributaries, which served as the original for a painting painted a little later in oils for the Berlin art lover Count Raczynski.

In 1844, the artist spent some time in Frankfurt am Main, working on a painting commissioned from him for the Städel Institute there: The Minnesinger Competition in the Wartburg. That same year, Schwind’s Almanac of Etchings was published with an explanatory text by E. von Feuchtersleben – a collection of 42 humorous compositions glorifying the German love of the tobacco pipe and beer. The artist’s lovely genre pictures also date back to this period of his activity: “The Wedding Journey” (located in the Schack Gallery in Munich), “Knight Kuno Falkenstein on the Road” (Leipzig City Museum) and “The Morning After the Wedding”, or “Rose” (Berlin National Gallery). In 1847, Schwind, having been invited to the post of professor at the Munich Academy of Arts, returned to this city. Classes with the students of the academy did not prevent him from indulging in his own artistic creativity with the same assiduity.

In 1849, he created an original composition “Symphony”, which superbly conveys the mood of Beethoven’s music (engraved by von Teter); then he composed a number of illustrations for the fairy tales “Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty”, as well as for the myth of Cupid and Psyche. Having received an invitation from the Grand Duke of Saxony to decorate the interior of the restored Wartburg Castle with frescoes, he went there and in 1853-1855 he painted a series of scenes from the life of St. Elizabeth in the corridor of the castle, a competition of minnesingers in the hall of singers, and episodes from the life of Landgrave Ludwig in one of the other rooms.

These works are undoubtedly the most successful of the artist’s fresco works. Almost immediately after them he completed a cycle of watercolour drawings on scenes from the fairy tale of the seven ravens (Weimar Museum), which, together with his last work of this kind, illustrations for “The Beautiful Melusine” (1870, kept in the Vienna Museum), being widespread in copper engravings, woodcuts and photographs, quite rightly enjoys enormous popularity in Germany: indeed, in the drawings of both cycles, more than in any other works of Schwind, his sense of beauty, richness of imagination, ability to penetrate the spirit of the plot and combine romanticism with humour in the same composition were visible.

Of the other works by this talented artist, the most significant are: painted cardboards for glass window frames in Glasgow Cathedral (1859), cardboard for the same frame in St. Michael’s Church in London (1863), a cardboard in the form of a frieze depicting the main moments in the life of the artist’s friend, F. Lachner (1863), frescoes in the Reichental Church (1863) and paintings in the Vienna Opera (a cycle of frescoes on themes from “The Magic Flute” in the loggia and sixteen paintings, executed in encaustic, in the foyer).

In addition to the listed works, which came from the brush, pencil and drawing pen of Schwind, the artist painted many small oil paintings, ornamental compositions, projects for various artistic products, caricatures and masterful sketches of all kinds.

Technically, all of Schwind’s works are distinguished by excellent drawing, but they are considered weak, although harmonious in color.

The artist died in Munich on February 8, 1871.