Biography

Austrian painter, graphic artist, and designer, trained in Vienna and in Munich under Cornelius. Schwind represents the tail-end of Germanic Romanticism and his most characteristic works depict an idealized fairy-tale Middle Ages, with knights in armour, damsels in distress, enchanted woods and castles, and much loving depiction of costume, architecture, etc. He was at his best working on a small scale, as in his numerous book illustrations and his woodcuts for Fliegende Blotter, a humorous Munich periodical. In his young days Schwind, who was an accomplished violinist, had been friendly with Franz Schubert and late in his own life he depicted Schubert's Vienna circle in a number of drawings.