George Dury

Born at Wurzburg, Bavaria, in 1817; died at Nashville, Tennessee in 1894.  He studied in Munich and, as a young man, enjoyed the patronage of King Ludwig I of Bavaria.  A portrait of Lola Montez, Ludwig’s flamboyant mistress, and a miniature of the Grand Duke Alexis survive from that era.

In 1849 he found it expedient to forsake Bavaria for America after having participated in an ill-advised celebration of Washington’s birthday during which Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and other revolutionaries were too extravagantly eulogized.  Newspaper advertisements of the early 1850s reveal that he had by then established a studio in Nashville for instruction in the Fine Arts.  

Tennessee Painting the Past, Tennessee Fine Arts Center, Cheekwood, 1960.
CLICK HERE for a 1957 article on Dury and his legacy in Nashville.