This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| The following biography is based on information provided to AskART by David Kortright, whose ancestor, Fanny Aikin Kortright, referenced Edward Kuntze in her autobiography, "The Recollections of my Long Life."
Kuntze was introduced to Fanny Kortright's family in England by Jasper Cropsey, landscape painter, to create a portrait bust of James Brock, a brother-in-law of Fanny's who died in 1859. The family was very pleased with Kuntze's work, and Kuntze and Fanny developed a strong friendship of which she wrote:
"The moment any peculiarly gifted individual was known to him, he never rested till he made me also acquainted with him; it was through him I knew the great Nathaniel Hawthorne, a man greater than Kings. Kuntze never seemed to think he could do enough for me. We were about the same age, had the same tastes, he was like me, a voracious reader, like me a profound hero-worshipper, and we were not only fast friends, but comrades. When the time came for him to return home to America, it made a great wrench in both our lives; we had proved that there can be real friendship between man and woman. He carried with him, a certain prestige from England, which helped him to success in America; his career was all that we could have wished, till he died, cut off at the early age of 44."
He born in Pomerania, Germany and came to the United States in 1852, working in Philadelphia in the mid-1950s and in New York from 1857. From 1860 to 1863, he lived in England where he met Fanny Kortright, who described him as a small man, with a highly intelligent look in his eye and much creative ability, but little talent for marketing his artwork. Sensing this, she recommended him for a number of medallion-portrait commissions, and connected him with a Mr. Hall, who was powerful in the art world through a journal.
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