German painter, printmaker and illustrator. His father, adjutant and friend of the future Prince Regent, Luitpold (1821–1912), died when Slevogt was just two years old. His mother moved to Würzburg, where he spent his schooldays. Even in his childhood and adolescence, family connections brought Slevogt to Pfalz, to an aunt in Landau and to the Finkler family in Neukastel. Initially he had planned to become a musician, but he began to study painting at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich in 1885. His fellow students included Gabriel von Hackl (1843–1926), Karl Raupp (1837–1918), Ludwig Herterich (1856–1932) and Wilhelm von Diez (1839–1907). In 1889 he spent a term at the Académie Julian in Paris. At that time Impressionism had very little effect on him. Following a trip to Italy in 1890 with the painter Robert Breyer (1866–1941) who had befriended him at the Akademie, he began to work independently as a painter in Munich. In 1893 he participated in the first exhibition of the newly founded Munich Secession, exhibiting Wrestling School (1893; Edenkoben, Schloss Villa Ludwigshöhe); the judges wanted to refuse this painting as immoral since its entwined and naked men caused offence. In the following years his paintings often appeared harsh and non-academic to conservative Munich circles. At this time Slevogt also made contributions to the journals Jugend and Simplizissimus, which were significant in the development of his graphic work. In 1898 he married his childhood friend Antonie (‘Nini’) Finkler. In the same year he went to Neukastel and on an autumn trip to an exhibition in Amsterdam of Rembrandt’s work with the art historian Karl Voll (1867–1917). Voll instructed him in the history of art and published the first monograph on him in 1912.

-From the Grove Dictionary of Art