Ancestry and Youth
Reinhold Begas was born into a family stemming from the former principality of Liège, in present-day Belgium, that traced its heritage back to the 16th century. His father, Carl Joseph Begas the Elder, the court painter who had studied in Cologne, Paris and Rome, moved to Berlin in 1826. His mother Wilhelmine, née Bock, was considered a great beauty.
The painter Begas the Elder was the founder of a dynasty of artists that flourished up into the 20th century, including Reinhold’s brothers, Oscar, Adalbert and Carl the Younger, as well as his son Werner. Begas the Elder was Reinhold’s first teacher. Leading figures of Berlin society frequented the father’s household: artists, scholars, statesmen, and even the Prussian King honoured the studio with several visits.
Even as a child Reinhold began forming objects out of wax and clay, laying with these early signs of his talent the cornerstone for his later exemplary career as the most important sculptor of the German Empire.
