Louise Seidler - Life - Munich (1817-18)

Munich (1817-18)

Thanks to Goethe she received a one-year scholarship of 400 Taler from duke Charles Augustus to go to Munich for a year's further training in painting. On 4 July 1817 she travelled to Munich and, with letters of recommendation from Goethe, was welcomed into the house of the philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. In Munich she again met her friend Pauline Gotter, who in 1812 had married the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling, and in her house met the Swedish poet Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom. Previously under the influence of the academy director Langer, Louise's painting style now became more independent as she moved from copying others' artworks to studying nature (which she had previously neglected). Even so, she still copied Raphael's "Portrait of Bindo Altoviti" in Munich for the Duke and produced a drawing of the friezes of Leo von Klenze's Apollotempel at the Nymphenburg Palace for Goethe. The duke then granted her request for a further scholarship in Italy, again of 400 Taler.