Adolf Schreyer

Adolf Schreyer (1828-1899), German painter, was born at Frankfort-on-Main, and studied art first at the Staedel Institute in his native town, and then at Stuttgart, Munich, and Dusseldorf; but he formed his style in Paris, whilst he found his favourite subjects in his travels in the East. He first accompanied Prince Thurn and Taxis through Hungary, Wallachia, Russia and Turkey; then, in 1854, he followed the Austrian army across the Wallachian frontier. In 1856 he went to Egypt and Syria, and in 1861 to Algiers. In 1862 he settled in Paris, but returned to Germany in 1870; and settled at Cronberg near Frankfort, where he died in 1899. Schreyer was, and is still, especially esteemed as a painter of horses, of peasant life in Wallachia and Moldavia, and of battle incidents. His work is remarkable for its excellent equine draughtsmanship, and for the artist's power of observation and forceful statement; and has found particular favour among French and American collectors. Of his battle-pictures there are two at the Schwerin Gallery, and others in the collection of Count Mensdorff-Pouilly and in the Ravene Gallery, Berlin. His painting of a "Charge of Artillery of Imperial Guard" was formerly at the Luxembourg Museum. The Metropolitan Museum, New York, owns three of Schreyer's oriental paintings: "Abandoned," "Arabs on the March" and "Arabs making a detour"; and many of his best pictures are in the Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, J. J. Astor, W. Astor, A. Belmont, and W. Walters collections. At the Kunsthalle in Hamburg is his "Wallachian Transport Train," and at the Staedel Institute, Frankfort, are two of his Wallachian scenes.