Léopold Carl Müller 

Biography of Léopold Carl Müller  ( 1834-1892 )

Born in Dresden in December 1834, Leopold Carl Müller is often mistakenly considered to be a German painter, even though his parents were both Austrian. He had 5 sisters, the two youngest of whom, Marie and Berthe, also devoted themselves to painting. Marie even achieved some success as a portrait painter.

Young Leopold learned to draw at an early age from his father, who owned a lithography workshop in Vienna. He grew up in a traditional environment of artists and craftsmen. The Müller family also made friends with a number of renowned contemporary painters, including Karl Blaas, who lived in the same building.
In 1852, he entered Blaas's preparatory class at the Vienna Academy before joining the master's class of the painter Christian Ruben the following year. There he met Ferdinand Laufberger, the future teacher of Gustav Klimt, who would remain one of his closest friends.

After the death of his father in 1862, and having already lost his mother two years earlier, the young man's life changed radically: he had to support his four sisters, who were not yet married. He accepted a job as a caricaturist at Figaro, a Viennese satirical weekly, and for eight years interrupted his real artistic career for this food job.

It was in 1870 that he was able to devote himself to painting again. He spent a few weeks in Hungary painting scenes of local daily life. This stay marked a significant turning point in his career, as he decided to turn away from classical history painting and move towards painting light, still in an academic style, in order to become a "colourist" as he called himself. It was during this period that he turned his attention to the Orient, and made his first trip to Egypt in the winter of 1873.

Müller's Orient was Egypt. All his Egyptian visits followed the same pattern: he arrived in Cairo from Alexandria, visited the surrounding area and socialised with European society. He regularly stayed with a Swiss merchant, André Bircher, or at the Hotel du Nil, one of the oldest European hotels in the country.
While he was there, he began by painting studies that were only completed when he returned to his studio in Vienna or Venice. Then, thanks to a work space he found in Cairo, he began to paint large formats on the spot.

In 1875, Léopold Carl Müller met the Prince of Wales. Several of the Prince's friends became interested in Müller's paintings, visited his Cairo studio and commissioned several works from him. Sir Arthur Ellis put him in touch with Henry Wallis, owner of the famous French Gallery in London. Following the success of his paintings for the Prince of Wales's travelling companions, Wallis offered him a contract that would mark a major turning point in his career. During the 1880s, Müller took part in group exhibitions at the French Gallery, selling a remarkable number of paintings and establishing a solid reputation among London's high society. At the time, the British capital was, along with Paris, the city that most promoted Orientalist painting. This period marked the apogee of his career.

He became a professor at the Vienna School of Fine Arts in 1887 and rector of the Academy three years later. Müller's class became home to some of the most famous Austrian painters of the turn of the century, including Rudolf Bacher and Hans Tichy. During the time he taught at the Academy, he continued to travel to the Orient, where he made his last visit in 1886.
Terribly affected by rapidly worsening sight problems, Léopold Carl Müller fell seriously ill and died near Vienna in August 1892.

To this day, Müller remains one of the greatest Orientalist artists of the Austrian school. Nicknamed "Müller the Egyptian", he was one of the best painters of light and colour.