August Friedrich Albrecht Schenck, Portrait of a Maltese Dog, 1800s, Oil Painting on Canvas

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August Friedrich Albrecht Schenck (Glückstadt, 1821 – 1900, Ecouen)
Portrait of a Maltese Dog
Signed lower left "Schenck"
Oil on … Read more August Friedrich Albrecht Schenck (Glückstadt, 1821 – 1900, Ecouen)
Portrait of a Maltese Dog
Signed lower left "Schenck"
Oil on canvas, 46 x 38 cm

Artist Biography:
He was born in Glückstadt, a Danish town later annexed by Prussia, in the province of Schleswig-Holstein. Son of Jakob and Christine Granso, he began his career as a merchant and tried to make his fortune in England and then in Portugal, where he stayed for five years, selling port wine. Ruined, he sold his cellars and arrived in France, first in Paris, then in Villiers-le-Bel in 1861, and finally in Écouen around 1862. Later, even at the height of his success as a painter, he continued to work as a merchant, partnering, between 1875 and 1882, with a man named Jean Théodore Coupier, domiciled in Paris, who specialized in the production of dyes derived from coal tar. In Warsaw, on August 23, 1850, he married Louise Emilie Stapaczjuska.
He then turned to painting, initially as an amateur, and became a student, like many others, of Léon Cogniet, who taught him the realistic reproduction of animals on canvas, which earned him a medal in 1865 and some compliments from Émile Zola, in his critiques at the 1866 Salon, who was surprised to see how closely the models resembled those depicted on canvas. Over time, his trademark became painting sheep. It is said, and many have witnessed it, that in his vast, now-defunct production at the top of the rue de la Beauvette, which now bears his name, he raised animals, particularly sheep. Models he had on hand, the ones Émile Zola himself saw during his visit to Écouen, Louis Enault wrote in "La Presse" on May 28, 1880: "Thus, he knows better than anyone their habitual gaits, their favorite poses, and the shifting play of their physiognomies." His long stays in Auvergne inspired him to paint numerous pictures of sheep, often caught in a snowstorm, "with their fleeces trembling and raised, very moving, very pathetic and very true," concludes the journalist himself. This piece has an attribution mark,
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