(b Hamburg, 16 Feb 1803; d Lübeck, 19 Nov 1875). German painter, draughtsman, stained-glass designer, illustrator and restorer. In Hamburg he studied drawing with Gerdt Hardorff the elder (1769–1864) and painting with Christopher Suhr (1771–1842) and Siegfried Bendixen (1786–1864). His admiration for early German art was inspired during a sketching trip through Schleswig-Holstein in June 1823 with Erwin Speckter. Drawings from this period include a copy of Hans Memling’s altarpiece in Lübeck Cathedral. Following a sojourn in Dresden in 1824, Milde and Speckter travelled to Munich in the summer of 1825 where they studied history painting at the Akademie. In 1826 they lived briefly in Rome; and Milde again worked in Rome from 1830 to 1832 where he was in contact with the Lukasbrüder. Their preference for an outline style reinforced Milde’s own primitivizing linear manner derived from his study of Northern Renaissance art. Milde’s few extant paintings are mostly portraits from the 1830s, although history paintings, genre scenes, marine views and landscapes have also been attributed to him. Milde completed both bust-length oil portraits and family groups set in domestic interiors, which provide a detailed record of middle-class life in Hamburg at this time. In watercolours such as Pastor Rautenberg and his Family (1833) or Professor Classen and his Family (1840; both Hamburg, Ksthalle) the sitters are posed around tables, drinking tea or coffee in the typically Biedermeier hybrid of portrait and genre painting. Milde’s pictures are usually characterized by diagonal viewpoints and asymmetrical compositions, often sharply cropped. In the portraits this evokes an air of intimacy and informality. Milde’s most famous painting, now known only through a lithograph, was a commissioned group portrait of the Hamburg Senate (Hamburg, Mus. Hamburg. Gesch.) from the late 1830s. In 1838 Milde moved to Lübeck where he remained until his death. During this period he completed many stained-glass commissions, culminating in the Last Judgement window (1865–70) in the west portal of Cologne Cathedral. Milde was also active in fighting for the conservation of early German architecture and art in Schleswig-Holstein, contributing much time to the restoration of the Marienkirche in Lübeck. He illustrated the Denkmäler bildender Kunst in Lübeck (2 vols, Lübeck, 1843–7) and several surgical textbooks on muscular and anatomical systems. He was also an amateur naturalist and amassed extensive collections of plants, insects, butterflies and animal skeletons, which he catalogued and donated to the Naturhistorisches Museum in Lübeck.

• Milde, Carl Julius
  • Biedermeier