Christian Mali

Christian Friedrich Mali (Darthuizen, near Utrecht, 1832 – Munich, 1906) was a German painter and art professor best known for animal painting. Born in the Netherlands, he matters chiefly for his devotion to animal subjects in nineteenth-century Germany, a genre he took up after an early phase of landscapes and architectural views.

The youngest of ten siblings, all of whom showed artistic talent, he moved as a child to Württemberg with his mother after his father died suddenly in 1833. There he worked as a xylographer until 1858. In 1860 he settled in Munich with his brother Johannes, also a painter, and formed a lifelong friendship with the animal painter Anton Braith. A trip to Verona drew him toward architectural painting, and he produced several views of its buildings.

After his brother's death in 1865 he visited Düsseldorf and then Paris, where he encountered the work of the recently deceased Constant Troyon. Perhaps influenced by Braith, he resolved to devote himself to animal painting. His early images emphasise scenery, many set around Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the Swabian Jura. His later work focuses almost entirely on dramatic animal subjects, especially sheep.

In 1905 he became an honorary citizen of Biberach an der Riß, and when he died the following year he was buried there beside Braith. He bequeathed much of his art, his studio and 60,000 marks to the city. The studio, together with Braith's, forms the core of the Braith-Mali Museum and is among the few fully preserved nineteenth-century artist studios.