Ludwig Deutsch 

Biography of Ludwig Deutsch  ( 1855-1935 )

Ludwig Deutsch was an Austrian painter who settled in Paris and became a noted Orientalist artist.

He was born in Vienna in 1855 into a well-established Jewish family. His father, Ignaz Deutsch, was a financier at the Austrian court. He studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts from 1872 to 1875, then moved to Paris in 1878, where he developed a keen interest in Orientalism.
He received his first artistic training at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna) under the tutelage of Anselm Feuerbach. In 1877, when Feuerbach retired as professor, Deutsch and a few other students tried to enter the class of Leopold Carl Müller, who had moved to Paris in 1876, but were initially refused entry. In 1878, Deutsch was finally accepted. By this time, he may also have been studying with Jean-Paul Laurens.
In Paris, Deutsch met the artists Arthur von Ferraris, Jean Discart and Rudolf Ernst, who was to become his lifelong friend. Thanks to these friendships, Deutsch became interested in Orientalist art. Around 1880, he broke off his contacts with Vienna and moved to Paris. He set up a studio on rue Le Pelletier in Paris and began to exhibit his paintings with great success.

His first Orientalist painting was exhibited at the 1883 Salon under the title "Un amateur orientaliste". Deutsch's painting evolved during this period. Although the subjects remained virtually the same, he moved from painting groups to single individual figures and interesting palaces.
During his career, he had several studios in Paris and the south of France. Ludwig Deutsch used the new technology brought by photography to capture local architecture, tile and stone work in his paintings.

Although his first Orientalist subjects appeared in the early 1880s, Deutsch's first documented trips to the Middle East took place in 1885, 1890 and 1898, when he visited Egypt. During the 1890s, he visited Egypt at least three times. Like many of his contemporaries, he found inspiration in the light, colors, landscapes and customs of North Africa. He collected a large number of oriental objects, including tiles, furniture, weapons, pipes, fabrics and costumes, which he later used in his paintings.

Always a perfectionist, his work is characterized by meticulousness and attention to detail, with a technique akin to photorealism.
At the outbreak of the First World War, he left Paris for the South of France. After the war, he acquired French nationality and changed his name from Ludwig to Louis Deutsch.