Friedrich Wilhelm Theodor Heyser (September 12, 1857 in Gnoien â September 7, 1921 in Dresden) was a German portrait, landscape, and history painter.
Friedrich Heyser studied from 1880 to 1883 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden as a student of Leon Pohle and . From 1883 to 1885, he studied with Ferdinand Keller at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe. In 1890 he briefly attended the Académie Julian in Paris. He lived and worked in Berlin, Bad Harzburg, and Dresden.
Heyser was a member of the and the artist group (green and white are the state colors of Saxony) formed around 1910. Members of the Grün-Weiàgroup included painters Max Frey, Josef Goller, Georg Jahn, , , , , , Johann Walter-Kurau, sculptors Richard Guhr, Hans Hartmann-McLean, , and architects , , and . The Grün-Weiàgroup, a progressive group within the , presented their works in the starting October 29, 1910. From today's perspective, the Grün-Weiàwas a moderate attempt to bring movement into the conservative structures of the Dresden Art Cooperative.
Friedrich Heyser created numerous portraits of well-known personalities as well as genre-like depictions, often based on German poetry. In the last years of his life he created some landscape paintings from the island of Föhr and Friesland.
In 2025, Heyser's painting Ophelia was referenced in Taylor Swift's music video for her song, "The Fate of Ophelia". The incident brought attention to the artist and drew fans to see painting in the Museum Wiesbaden.
Portraits
Genre-like depictions