Rudolf
Swoboda (4 October 1859 – 24 January 1914), sometimes given the epithet of The
Younger, was a 19th-century Austrian painter, born in Vienna. He studied under
his uncle Leopold Carl Müller, and voyaged with him to Egypt in 1880. He was a
well-known Orientalist. His sister was the portrait painter Josefine Swoboda,
also well-known for her portraits of the British royal family. In 1886, Queen
Victoria commissioned Swoboda to paint several of a group of Indian artisans
who had been brought to Windsor as part of the Golden Jubilee preparations.
Victoria liked the resulting paintings so much that she paid Swoboda's way to
India to paint more of her Indian subjects. Swoboda painted many of the
ordinary people of India in a grouping of small (no more than eight inches high)
paintings which resulted.While in India, he stayed, part of the time, with John
Lockwood Kipling, and met his son Rudyard Kipling. The younger Kipling was
unimpressed with Swoboda, writing to a friend about two "Austrian
maniacs" who thought they were "almighty" artists aiming to
"embrace the whole blazing Upon his return from India, he also painted (in
1888 and 1889) two portraits of Abdul Karim (the Munshi), Victoria's favourite
Indian servant. Most of these Indian paintings hang at Osborne House, once
Victoria's residence on the Isle of Wight. The record price paid for a Swoboda
painting was for The Carpet Menders, which sold in 2008 for 2.6 million USD at
Christies.
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