KAULBACH, WILHELM VON German painter, was born in Arolsen on Oct. 15, 1805. As a youth of seventeen, he entered the art academy of Dusseldorf, then under the directorship of Peter von Cornelius. The ambitious work by which Louis I. sought to transform Munich into a German Athens afforded the young painter an appropriate sphere. Cornelius had been commissioned to execute the enormous frescoes in the Glyptothek, and his custom was in the winters, to complete the cartoons at Diisseldorf, and in the summers, accompanied by his best scholars, to carry out the designs in colour on the museum walls in Munich. When Cornelius became director of the Bavarian academy in 1824, Kaulbach settled in Munich, and in 1849, when Cornelius left for Berlin, succeeded to the directorship of the academy, an office which he held till his death on April 7, Early in the series of his multitudinous works came the famous "Narrenhaus," the appalling memories of a certain madhouse near Dusseldorf ; the composition shows points of contact with Ho garth. Somewhat to the same category belong the illustrations to Reineke Fuchs. These show how dominant and irrepressible were the artist's sense of satire. Occasionally the grotesque degenerates into the vulgar, the grand into the ridiculous, as in the satire on "the Pigtail Age" in a frescoe outside the New Pinakothek. Kaul bach contracted a fatal facility in covering wall and canvas by the acre. He painted in the Hofgarten, the Odeon, the Palace and on the external walls of the New Pinakothek. His perspicuous and showy manner also gained him abundant occupation as a book illustrator; he was glad to take inspiration from Wieland, Goethe, even Klopstock; among his engraved designs are the Shakespeare gallery, the Goethe gallery and a folio edition of the Gospels. With regard to these examples of "the Munich school," it was asserted that Kaulbach had been unfortunate alike in having found Cornelius for a master and King Louis for a patron, that he attempted "subjects far beyond him, believing that his admiration for them was the same as inspiration"; and supplied the lack of real imagination by "a compound of intellect and fancy."
Nevertheless in such compositions as the "Destruction of Jerusalem" and the "Battle of the Huns" Kaulbach shows creative imagination. As a dramatic poet he tells the story, depicts char acter, seizes on action and situation. The manner may be occa sionally noisy and ranting, but the effect after its kind is tre mendous. The cartoon, which, as usual in modern German art, is superior to the ultimate picture, was executed in the artist's prime at the age of thirty. Ten or more years were devoted to the decoration of the grand staircase of the Berlin museum with a series of pictures depicting the Tower of Babel, the Age of Homer, the Destruction of Jerusalem, the Battle of the Huns, the Crusades and the Reformation. These tableaux, severally 3o ft. long, and each comprising over one hundred figures above life size, are surrounded by minor compositions making more than 20 in all. The idea was to congregate around the world's historic dramas the prime agents of civilization; thus here are assembled allegoric figures of Architecture and other arts, of Science and other kingdoms of knowledge, together with lawgivers from the time of Moses. To the painter's last period belongs the series of melodramatic designs illustrative of Goethe. The canvas, more than 3o ft. long, the Sea Fight at Salamis, painted for the Maxi milianeum, Munich, evinces wonted imagination and facility in composition.
See F. von Ostini, Wilhelm von Kaubach (Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1906).