Alois Hauser (1831 - 1909)

Franz von Lenbach's 1885 portrait of Alois Hauser — a Swiss-German sculptor (1831-1909) who worked in Munich — connects the leading German portrait painter with the neighboring field of sculpture. Hauser had a distinguished career as a sculptor of ecclesiastical and public works; his portrait by Lenbach represents the social and professional solidarity of Munich's artistic establishment, where painters and sculptors moved in the same circles and documented each other's faces. Lenbach's portrait of a fellow artist carries a different quality from his portraits of industrialists or politicians — the shared professional world creating a more relaxed characterization.

Lenbach renders Hauser with his characteristic dark-ground technique but potentially with more warmth and directness than his more formal commissions. The sculptor's face is modeled with careful observation of professional character — the hands that work clay or stone, the specific physical presence of a man accustomed to three-dimensional form. Lenbach's warm earth tones and dark chiaroscuro create the Old Master gravity he brought to all serious portraiture.