Alfred Seifert

Who was Alfred Seifert?

Alfred Seifert was a Czech-German painter, famous for his female portraits.

He was born in Praskolesy but within a few months, his family moved to nearby Hořovice. As a child, he fell seriously ill, could not walk for four years and spent two years in an orthopedic institution. Instead of playing, he started to draw pictures and his artistic talent soon started to emerge. His first teachers were Karel Würbs, inspector of Estates Gallery at Prague Castle, and Alois Kirnig, landscape painter. After two years of studies at a high school in Malá Strana, he got an admission to Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 1869. In 1876, he opened his own workshop there.

Seifert focused on portraits of women, especially on sentimentally mooded heads of girls which became known as "Seifert type". Critics appreciated a well-thought composition of paintings, attention to detail, as well as harmonic colors and a pleasant atmosphere.

Seifert spent most of his life in Germany. In native Bohemia, he was personally almost unknown, though he had exhibitions in Prague and black-and-white reproductions of his works regularly appeared in Světozor magazine.