Marie Herndl

Marie (Maria) Herndl (22 June 1860 – 14 May 1912) was a 19th-century German artist who worked with stained glass. She earned a bronze medal at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 for her controversial work entitled "Queen of the Elves". Herndl was arrested by the United States Secret Service in 1904 for trying to approach President Theodore Roosevelt about her art.

Early life Herndl was born 22 June 1860, and raised in Munich. Her parents were both art teachers. She went to the Royal Institute of Art and studied under Franz Xaver Zettler. She did an apprenticeship with the Gabriel Meyer Studio and one of her works entitled "Brunhilde at Worms" was sold to owners of a Bavarian castle.

Career

After moving to America she spent time in New York working for stained-glass art masters John LaFarge and Louis C. Tiffany. For the 1893 world's fair she created a stained-glass work called "Queen of the Elves", it also came to be called "The Fairy Queen". The work earned her a bronze medal. After the fair it was displayed at the Field House in Chicago.

There was some controversy surrounding the "Queen of the Elves" stained-glass exhibit. The central figures in the piece are nude, and only their lower parts are minimally covered. Candace Wheeler told Herndl to cover at least the body of the central figure in the stained-glass portrait from "knees to the throat", Herndl convinced the exhibitors at the Electric building to have her work exhibited there. It was the most popular building at the fair, and her work was in the same building as Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla. Because of the location her art was seen by more people and it won several prizes. However the work has been controversial ever since, and it has spent most of its time hidden away. In 1911 Patrick Cudahy commissioned eleven pieces. The window was on loan to the Smithsonian until 1962, and it eventually it came to rest in a US Senate dining room.

Herndl died in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on 14 May 1912.

Notable works "Hans Christian Andersen window" (1896) Milwaukee Public Library "Sword Dancer" for Edward Lauterbach "George Washington" chamber of the US Senate "Queen of the Elves" (also called "The Fairy Queen")