1805 - 1850
Although little is known of Christian Mayr's youth it is probable that he received his realist training in painting from his step-father, Friedrich Christian Fries. By 1823 he had established himself as an architectural painter in Nuremberg but, later in the same year he enrolled in the Academy of Art in Munich.
In the autumn of 1833 Mayr arrived in the United States aboard the brig Potomac and commenced his career as a portrait painter. In 1834 he exhibited six of his portraits at the National Academy's ninth annual exhibition and quickly established a successful reputation. During the following decade Mayr worked as an itinerant portrait painter in eastern and southern United States residing periodically in White Sulpher Springs, West Virginia, Boston, Charleston, and New Orleans. After 1838 he became a strong proponent of the daguerreotype, yet its advent led him to turn his talents increasingly toward genre painting. In 1845 he settled in New York and opened a studio in Lispenard Street. During the remaining five years of his life he frequently exhibited his genre paintings at both the National Academy and the American Art Union. In his Historic Annals of the National Academy of Design Thomas Seir Cummings, in a rare act of derision, recorded Mayr's death:
Died, Christian Mayer [sic], Academician--a foreign artist. His works are but little known. He was a man of merit, but not marked ability. As an American artist by education, he probably would not have commanded election into the body of Academicians.
In the autumn of 1833 Mayr arrived in the United States aboard the brig Potomac and commenced his career as a portrait painter. In 1834 he exhibited six of his portraits at the National Academy's ninth annual exhibition and quickly established a successful reputation. During the following decade Mayr worked as an itinerant portrait painter in eastern and southern United States residing periodically in White Sulpher Springs, West Virginia, Boston, Charleston, and New Orleans. After 1838 he became a strong proponent of the daguerreotype, yet its advent led him to turn his talents increasingly toward genre painting. In 1845 he settled in New York and opened a studio in Lispenard Street. During the remaining five years of his life he frequently exhibited his genre paintings at both the National Academy and the American Art Union. In his Historic Annals of the National Academy of Design Thomas Seir Cummings, in a rare act of derision, recorded Mayr's death:
Died, Christian Mayer [sic], Academician--a foreign artist. His works are but little known. He was a man of merit, but not marked ability. As an American artist by education, he probably would not have commanded election into the body of Academicians.
