David Dalhoff Neal - Royal Academy Years (1862-1868)

Royal Academy Years (1862-1868)

Neal arrived in Hamburg on New Year's Eve, 1862. Now, 24 years old, he became a pupil of the Royal Academy, Munich, under Kaulbach where he concentrated on the art of drawing, and then painting and the art of architectural perspective under famous glass artist Max Emanuel Ainmiller, whose daughter he subsequently married soon after he entered the academy, despite the "... difficulties and objections that took on the realistic guise of romance". Marie Ainmiller and David Neal were married December 9, 1862. They had a son, Maximilian Dalhoff Neal, on March 26, 1865, named after Marie's father, and who would later become a great German dramatist. Under the direction of his father-in-law, David first travelled to Italy, where he painted the interior of St Mark's Basilica, Venice, and then to England, where he painted the interior of Westminster Abbey. Neal was confronted with major opposition in Westminster, being denied twice. It took a letter from Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster, before he gained permission to paint, with which he was able to come and go as he pleased through the dean's private doors. After all, it was his father-in-law that had done a lot of the glass work in the abbey.