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Imhof, Heinrich Max
(b Bürglen, Uri, 13 May 1795; d Rome, 4 May 1869). Swiss sculptor. He trained under Franz Abart (1769–1863) and then, with the support of the German geologist and scholar Gottfried Ebel, spent some time in Zurich. There, the Crown Prince of Prussia, later Frederick William IV, King of Prussia, took notice of Imhof and commissioned the sculptor to execute a portrait of him in alabaster (untraced; plaster version, 1819, Altdorf, Hist. Mus.). Through the patronage of Ebel and the Prince, Imhof was able to complete his training in Stuttgart under Johann Heinrich Dannecker. He was soon commissioned to execute a copy of Bertel Thorvaldsen’s Night, justifying a trip to Rome that he made in 1824 with the Swiss sculptor Johann Jakob Oechslin (1802–73). Unlike the latter, Imhof settled in Rome to pursue the difficult career of the émigré sculptor. Supervised by Thorvaldsen, he executed his first group piece, Eros and Psyche (1825), a work steeped in Neo-classicism. The exhibitions organized by the Römischer Kunstverein allowed him to expand his circle of patrons: Frederick William IV, to whom Imhof’s David and Goliath (1827; plaster version, Berne, Kstmus.; marble version, untraced) much appealed, commissioned him to execute another version of Eros and Psyche in marble (Zurich, priv. col.); Ludwig I, King of Bavaria, commissioned from him a colossal bust of Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria, for the German pantheon Walhalla, near Regensburg (in situ); and Ludwig I’s son, Otto, King of Greece (reg 1832–62), summoned Imhof to teach in Athens from 1835 to 1836. Later, Imhof began work on a series of groups with Old Testament subjects, including Hagar and Ishmael (1845), which was purchased by a member of the nobility and donated to the Bernische Kunstgesellschaft in Berne. Eve Before the Fall (1862–4; Berne, Kstmus.), a life-size work in marble, was acquired to decorate the new Bundeshaus in Berne. Imhof finally achieved official recognition in Switzerland when, in 1865, he was commissioned to create a monument to William Tell, to be erected in Altdorf; the work, however, remained unfinished (some drawings, Altdorf, Staatsarchv Uri).
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