(Vienna 1807-1862; father of the painter Leopold Carl Müller)
K. K. Hungarian Infantry Regiment in Charge, signed, dated Leop. Müller 1844, oil on canvas, 46 x 58 cm, framed, (KN)

Provenance:
Private Collection Salzburg;
Dorotheum, Vienna, 9 November 1965, lot 77;
Private Collection Vienna.

Leopold Müller is the founding father of the Müller dynasty of Viennese painters. His son Leopold Carl Müller became famous as an Oriental painter, as well as his daughters Marie and Bertha Müller who were active portrait painters. Finally, his grandson Rudolf Swoboda the Younger also made a name for himself as a painter of Orientalist subjects, known far beyond the borders of Austria.

Leopold Müller himself, however, was the son of a forester and a hunter’s daughter. As a young man, he first embarked on a military career as a cannonier and later bombardier, before being discharged from active military service after seven years due to lung weakness. He was only 23 years old at the time. At first he worked in hunting and forestry in Bohemia, then in the service of the English ambassador in Dresden, when in 1836 he turned to his real passion, lithography, which occupied him until his early death in 1862. For decades, he constantly improved his own skills and developed new technical processes, which he patented.

The present lot is an extremely rare example of his skill in the field of oil painting. The military subject and the accuracy in the rendering of the uniforms relate to his own experiences in the military. 1844 was the phase of his career in which he found his place in life as father to a young family and independent lithographer. (KN)