biography of David Dalhoff NEAL (1837-1915)

Birth place: Lowell, MA

Death place: Munich, Germany

Addresses: Munich, Germany

Profession: Historical and portrait painter

Studied: Munich Academy, 1861; Bavarian Royal Acad.; Piloty, in Munich, 1869-76.

Exhibited: NAD, 1864-86 (8 annuals); Munich Royal Acad., 1876 (gold medal, the first American to win this award); Paris Salon, 1880; Boston AC, 1886; Mark Hopkins Inst., 1898

Member: ANA

Work: Cleveland Pub. Lib.; Royal Gal., Stuttgart; AIC

Comments: Grew up in Lowell (Mass.) and Andover (N.H.) and went to California in 1857 after visiting New Orleans and South America. His initial efforts in drawing and painting won the attention of a California patron who in 1861 enabled Neal to go to Europe and study in Munich. He eventually married the daughter of one of his Munich teachers, and made that city his home until his death. His earlier work was mostly historical in subject matter, and his "The First Meeting of Mary Stuart and Rizzio" (1876) was widely exhibited and reproduced, but in later years he specialized in portraiture and this brought him frequently to the states for such sitters as Mark Hopkins, Whitelaw Reid, and several professors of Princeton Univ.

Sources: G&W; WW10; DAB; CAB; Thieme-Becker; Art Annual, XII (1915), 261; P&H Samuels, 344; Fink, American Art at the Nineteenth-Century Paris Salons, 375.