Charles de Steuben

Baron Charles Auguste Guillaume Steuben (April 18, 1788 – November 21, 1856), also Charles de Steuben, was a German-born French Romantic painter and lithographer active during the Napoleonic Era.

De Steuben was born the son of the Duke of Württemberg officer Carl Hans Ernst von Steuben. At the age of twelve he moved with his father, who entered Russian service as a captain, to Saint Petersburg, where he studied drawing at the Art Academy classes as a guest student.

Thanks his father's social contacts in the court of the Tsar, in the summer of 1802 he accompanied the young Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia (1786–1859) and granddaughter of Frederick II Eugene, Duke of Württemberg, to the Thuringian cultural city of Weimar, where the Tsar's daughter two years later married Charles Frederick, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1783–1853). Steuben, then fourteen years old, was a Page at the ducal court, a position for which the career prospects would be in the military or administration.

The poet Friedrich Schiller was a family friend who at once recognized De Steuben's artistic talent and instilled in him his political ideal of free self-determination regardless of courtly constraints.

In 1803 Steuben traveled with a letter to his friend, painter François Gérard, in Paris. Gerard took in many penniless aspiring artists and students for training. After two years of preparation, in February 1805 Steuben enrolled in the prestigious École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, where he learned from renowned teachers, including Jacques-Louis David and Pierre-Paul Prud'hon.

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