The Little Parisian Albert von Keller

Fin-de-siècle society was the focus of interest to Albert von Keller, a popular Munich portrait artist, when he sojourned in Paris in 1882. In the French capital he struck up friendship with Mihály Munkácsy, who was already a celebrated artist of the salon genre and who seemed to have influenced the stylistic development of Keller’s art. The Little Parisian is a study for more complex genre painting. The unusual angle with the figure seen from behind and its placement in a dark space are emblematic of the early period of Keller’s psychological portraiture, which – like much of Munkácsy’s portrait art – instead of focusing on the physical appearance, concentrates on showing the subject’s character and state of mind.

Luca Keserü