Adolfo Müller-Ury

Adolfo Müller-Ury, KSG (March 29, 1862 – July 6, 1947) was a Swiss-born American portrait painter and impressionistic painter of roses and still life.

He was born Felice Adolfo Müller on 29 March 1862 at Airolo, Switzerland to a prominent patrician family who descended from Charlemagne to the von Rechburg family (a lady from which family married a Müller) and by the 18th and 19th centuries included mercenaries, lawyers, hoteliers and businessmen.

Adolfo was the sixth of nineteen children, most of whom survived infancy, born to Roman Catholic parents: Carl Alois Müller (1825–1887), a lawyer, was Gerichtspräsident (Presiding Judge) of the Cantonal Courts, and Genovefa (née Lombardi; 1836–1920), daughter of Felice Lombardi, Director of the Hospice on the St Gotthard Pass, which he took over from the Capuchin monks who had run it for centuries. The family spoke Airolese mainly, a local dialect of Ticinese Italian, as well as Swiss-German.

After attending the municipal drawing school in the Ticino, and school in Sarnen he was encouraged by the sculptor Vincenzo Vela (1820–1891) and possibly the Commendatore Metalli-Stresa (a family friend), to study oil painting under the local painter of religious pictures in a Nazarene-style, Melchior Paul von Deschwanden in Stans in Switzerland (who died in Adolfo's arms in February 1881). On April 25, 1881, he entered the Munich Academy (Register No: 3945) where he stayed 18 months, studying with Professors Alexander Strähuber (1814–82), Alois Gabl (1845–93), Gyula Benczur (1844–1920), and possibly Karl von Piloty; on the same day, a fellow Swiss called Adalbert Baggenstos (1863–97), who originated from Stans, also registered at the Munich Academy.

Between Munich and Paris he spent nearly two years (1882–84) in Rome, studying and copying Old Masters, apparently at the instigation of the distinguished Ticinese-born artist Antonio Ciseri (1821-1891), and where he apparently painted portraits of Cardinals Joseph Hergenröther and Gustav Adolf Hohenlohe who were acquaintances of his uncle Josef, a Domherr in Chur, Switzerland. His known early work is necessarily varied, and includes pictures in the style of Deschwanden (usually signed Müller, Adolfo), academic drawings executed in Munich (usually signed Ad. Müller), copies of Old Masters, and early independent oils, sometimes was influenced by artist's like Robert Zünd (1827–1909) and Frank Buchser (1828–1890) which includes landscapes, genre and religious pictures. Many of these survive in the ancestral home of the Müllers in Hospental, Switzerland, and with surviving members of his family in the St Gotthard and elsewhere.

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