George Washington's First Grave at Mount Vernon, Va.,
A. Z. Shindler (Artist),
c. 1870-1880,
...

Antonio Zeno Shindler

1823-1899

BiographyA.Z. Shindler’s life was little documented, and much of his biography remains uncertain. It is believed that he was born Antonio [or Antonion] Zeno in Bulgaria or Romania. After his family was executed, he apparently fled across Europe to Geneva, Switzerland where he met a Frenchman named Dr. Shindler. He moved with Shindler, a benefactor, to Paris where he was educated, and adopted his patron’s surname. He may have traveled to London after Dr. Shindler’s death, and eventually traveled to the United States, by at least 1852, when he was listed as an artist in the city directory of Philadelphia. He resided there until 1863, and exhibited paintings and drawings in a variety of genres at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts annually from 1852 to 1863. He likely traveled to New Hampshire by at least 1854, given the titles of a number of his landscapes in these exhibitions. Several early landscapes are in museum collections. Shindler married a French woman, Justina Fontaine, and their daughter, Isabella, was born in 1853. (He exhibited a portrait of Isabella at the Academy in 1856.) In 1867, Shindler and his family moved to Washington, D.C. where he established the photographic business “Shindler and Company” at Addis Photographic Company on Pennsylvania Avenue. He soon became involved with the Smithsonian Institution, producing glass plate photographs of others’ daguerrotypes of Native Americans, as well as his own photographic portraits of Native American delegates who traveled to Washington, D.C. Shindler’s copies and photographs were shown in 1869 in the first photographic exhibit ever held at the Smithsonian. A series of his paintings created from these photographs were exhibited at the Smithsonian in 1870. After moving back to Philadelphia in 1872, the artist was again employed by the Smithsonian from 1876 until his death. He painted casts of fish, snakes and animals, tinted black and white photographs, and made watercolor drawings of cultural scenes. He also created a large group of Ethnographic paintings, dated by the Smithsonian to c. 1893.

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