Ferdinand Olivier

Johann Heinrich Ferdinand Olivier (1785–1841) was a German painter associated with the Nazarene movement.

Life

Olivier was born in Dessau on 1 April 1785, to a family of Swiss-French descent. He began his artistic education in 1801 by taking drawing lessons from Carl Wilhelm Kolbe, and also studied with the woodblock printers Christian Haldenwang and Johann Friedrich Unger. In 1804 he moved to Dresden with his brother Heinrich. and began a life-sized portrait of Napoleon on his horse, which he seems only to have finished after leaving the city. Olivier was the only member of the group never to have visited Italy. He died at Munich on 11 February 1841.