Frank Duveneck (1848–1919)

Frank Duveneck was an American figure and portrait painter. While having grown up in Covington, Duveneck was a part of the German community in Cincinnati, Ohio, just across the Ohio River.

However, due to his Catholic beliefs and German heritage, he was an outsider as far as the artistic community of Cincinnati was concerned. 

In 1869, he went abroad to study with Wilhelm von Diez and Wilhelm Leibl at the Royal Academy of Munich, where he learned a dark, realistic and direct style of painting. He subsequently became one of the young American painters—others were William Merritt Chase, John Henry Twachtman, Willis Seaver Adams and Walter Shirlaw—who in the 1870s overturned the traditions of the Hudson River School and started a new art movement characterized by a greater freedom of paint application.