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German painter, born at Speyer, the son of a well-known archaeologist, was the leading classicist painter of the German 19th-century school. He was the first to realize the danger arising from contempt of technique, that mastery of craftsmanship was needed to express even the loftiest ideas, and that an ill-drawn colored cartoon can never be the supreme achievement in art. After having passed through the art schools of Düsseldorf and Munich, he went to Antwerp and subsequently to Paris, where he benefited by the teaching of Couture, and produced his first masterpiece, "Hafiz at the Fountain" in 1852.
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