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Peter Edward Stroehling

Peter Edward Stroehling, also spelled Peter Eduard Ströhling, and sometimes Stroely or Straely (1768 – c. 1826) was a portrait artist from either Germany or the Russian Empire who spent his later years based in London. He worked in oils and in miniature and painted a number of royal portraits.

Queen Charlotte in 1807 by Stroehling

Life

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According to most accounts, Stroehling was born in 1768 in Düsseldorf.[1][2] However, one biographer states that he was a Russian of German descent, educated at the expense of Catherine the Great.[3] He worked in Paris, Mannheim, Frankfurt, and Mainz, and by about 1792 was studying in Italy. Early in 1796, he was in Vienna and the same year travelled to Saint Petersburg to attend the coronation of Paul I of Russia, taking with him a retinue of servants and representing himself as an English nobleman. He subsequently gained much portrait work in Saint Petersburg and stayed there until 1801.[4][5]

From 1803 to 1807, he was in London, where like Johann Zoffany, he foresaw significantly better opportunities to make his name and fortune than at a German court,[6] and was there again from 1819 to 1826.[4] He exhibited his work at the Royal Academy between 1803 and 1826.[5]

Stroehling was uncertainly reported to have died in London about 1826, and no new work was exhibited after that date.[4]

Work

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Stroehling painted portraits and historical figures, both in oils and in miniature media. His work is almost always less than life-size.[5]

Notable commissions include a portrait of Queen Louise of Prussia, which was acquired by the Hohenzollern Museum in Berlin, and one of King George III at Windsor Castle with an adoring spaniel, painted in 1807 and now in the Royal Collection.[7][8] The same year he painted an unflattering portrait of the king's wife, Queen Charlotte (illustrated), which is also now owned by H. M. the Queen.[9] His painting of Aloys I, Prince of Liechtenstein, is in the Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna.[10]

Stroehling's image of the poet Ludwig Achim von Arnim is among his best-known work and is also the only well-known likeness of its subject.[11][12] He also painted the Duke of Wellington,[13] Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, Princess Augusta Sophia, Princess Elizabeth,[14] and the Italian contralto Giuseppina Grassini.[15]

Publications

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  • P. E. Stroehling, Original Sketches drawn upon stone (London; printed by G. J. Vollweiler at the polytautographic office No. 9, Buckingham Place, Fitzroy Square)[16]
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Notes

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  1. ^ Leo R. Schidlof, The Miniature in Europe in the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries: M–Z (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1964), p. 790
  2. ^ Karl Leopold Strauven, Ueber künstlerisches Leben und Wirken in Düsseldorf bis zur Düsseldorfer Maler-Schule unter Direktor Schadow (Düsseldorf: Hofbuchdruckerei H. Voß, 1862), p. 42
  3. ^ Basil S. Long, British Miniatures (1929)
  4. ^ a b c Graham Reynolds, Katharine Baetjer, European miniatures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996), p. 125
  5. ^ a b c Oliver Millar, The later Georgian pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, vol. 1 (London: Phaidon, 1969), p. 118: "Peter Edward Stroehling, 1768-after 1826. Portrait-painter, whose works are almost always below the scale of life. Born in Dusseldorf, he worked in Paris, Mannheim, Frankfurt, Mainz, Rome, Naples."
  6. ^ Sabine Grabner, Michael Krapf, Aufgeklärt bürgerlich: Porträts von Gainsborough bis Waldmüller 1750-1840 (Hirmer, 2006): "Und deutsche Künstler wie Johann Joseph Zoffany und der weniger bekannte Peter Eduard Ströhling sahen wahrscheinlich im wohlhabenden London deutlich bessere Möglichkeiten, zu Ruhm und Geld zu gelangen, als am kurfürstlichen Hof..."
  7. ^ Charles Carlton, Royal Childhoods (1986), p. 113: "George III at Windsor, 1807, by Peter Edward Stroehling. Here the king looks rather like a gentleman farmer, with his estate in the background and an adoring spaniel at his feet."
  8. ^ Kay Staniland, In Royal Fashion: the clothes of Princess Charlotte of Wales & Queen Victoria 1796-1901 (Museum of London, 1997), p. 26
  9. ^ John Cannon, Ralph Griffiths, The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Monarchy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-19-822786-8), p. 524
  10. ^ Alois I at fuerstenhaus.li, accessed 10 December 2011
  11. ^ Helene M. Kastinger Riley, Ludwig Achim von Arnims Jugend- und Reisejahre (Bouvier, 1978), p. 104: "Der Maler Peter Eduard Ströhling, dessen Portrait von Arnim eigentlich das einzige wohlbekannte Bildnis des Dichters ist..."
  12. ^ Georg Kolbe, Undying Faces: A Collection of Death Masks (2003), p. 94
  13. ^ Christopher Hibbert, Wellington: A Personal History (2010), p. 455
  14. ^ Peter Edward Stroehling at royalcollection.org.uk, accessed 12 December 2011
  15. ^ Ludwig Achim von Arnim, Clemens Brentano, Achim von Arnim und Clemens Brentano: Freundschaftsbriefe II (Eichborn, 1998), p. 825
  16. ^ Carl Zigrosser, Prints: thirteen illustrated essays on the art of the print (Holt, Rinehart and Winston & Print Council of America, 1962), p. 125
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