Alexander von Wagner

Alexander originally Sándor vonWagner (April 16, 1838 – January 19, 1919) was a Hungarian painter.

Wagner was born in Pesth. After graduating from the Real-Gymnasium in his hometown at the age of nineteen, he entered the Academy of Fine Arts at Vienna, where he was a student of Henrik Weber. The following year, he switched to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts at Munich and was taught by Professor Karl von Piloty from 1856 to 1864. From 1869 to 1910 he was professor in history painting at the Munich Academy. His themes were history paintings and Hungarian life scenes in particular. A portrait of Von Wagner painted by Franz Lachner belongs to the collection of the Gebrüder-Lachner-Museum in Rain since 2003. Among his students were Pál Szinyei Merse, Emil Wiesel, Anton Ažbe, Franciszek Żmurko.

Von Wagner died in Munich, where he is buried in the Old Southern Cemeterey.

His most famous work is Chariot Race (now at the Manchester Art Gallery), which he painted for the Vienna Exposition (1873) and then expanded to a larger size for the Columbian Exposition (Chicago Fair) of 1893. The painting depicts the close of a chariot race in the Circus Maximus in Ancient Rome, presided over by Emperor Domitian. Chariot Race was completed in 1882 just two years after the publication of Ben-Hur. The painting depicts the loss of a wheel of a chariot at the height of the race. In the original book the wheel is "crushed", in the painting it is shown intact spinning off to the left.

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