Christian Seybold (1695-1768)

• Was a German painter in the Baroque style.
• Seybold is best known for his detailed, realistic character heads and portraits (over two dozen of himself), which sometimes stood out from the idealized ones preferred at that time.
• He was one of eleven children in a family that originally came from Oberursel.
• At some unknown date, he moved to Vienna.
• There, in 1715, he married and became a father only three weeks later.
• Both his wife and child died within the following two years.
• Within less than seven months, he remarried.
• His second wife, Susanna, had two children who would live into their adulthood.
• In 1745 he received an appointment as court painter to King Augustus III, who was also the Elector of Saxony, in Dresden. 

• Four years later, he was named to fill the same position at the court of Empress Maria Theresa.

• The style for his detailed character heads was heavily influenced by Balthasar Denner.

• For his self-portraits, he was primarily influenced by Jan Kupecký and Rembrandt.

• One of his first datable portraits (after 1723, before 1728) is of the imperial counsellor, Count Johann Adam von Questenberg; a prominent patron of the arts.

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