Georg Emanuel Opitz

Opitz was born on 4 April 1775 in Prague, then part of the Bohemian lands of the Habsburg Monarchy. He completed his secondary schooling in Prague and briefly studied law there before turning to art, though the specific institution and year are not documented in available sources. He then continued his training from 1793 at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts under Giovanni Battista Casanova. He went on to work in Vienna and later Leipzig, producing paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints centered on genre scenes and social satire, including crowded market and street subjects such as the frequently reproduced Der Voeller (The Glutton), dated 1804. Alongside his visual work, he also wrote historical novels under the pseudonym Bohemus. He died in Leipzig on 12 July 1841. His name appears in the historical and market record under several spellings, most commonly Opiz and Opitz, and occasionally as Georg Opitz or in transliterated forms such as Georg-Emmanuel Opiz; all refer to the same artist.

General art-historical references, including the Web Gallery of Art, describe Opitz as a painter and graphic artist known for genre scenes and social satire, working in the period associated with early Romanticism and the Biedermeier era. No verbatim critical assessments from named critics in major outlets could be confirmed in available sources, and no documented chronology of major exhibitions or awards was found. This reflects the nature of the surviving record for a working artist of his period rather than an absence of art-historical interest; his works continue to circulate through museum-adjacent reference sources such as the Web Gallery of Art and through public-domain image repositories like Wikimedia Commons.

Opitz's market is that of a historical, moderately traded artist rather than a blue-chip name. Auction databases report a substantial volume of activity, though Artprice's own summary pages give differing totals, citing 261 and 299 total auction appearances since 1987 across paintings, drawings, and watercolors. Detailed lot-level records, including hammer prices, sale dates, and auction houses, sit behind a subscription paywall on the major art-market databases (Artprice, MutualArt, Invaluable), so a specific, verifiable all-time auction record could not be established from available sources. MutualArt's public summary cites realized prices of "up to" USD 1,212,694 for paintings and USD 53,125 for works on paper, but without a title, date, or auction house attached to that figure, it is presented here only as a loose, unverified indicator of the top of the market, not a confirmed record.

There is no current gallery or estate representation for Opitz. His works reach the market almost entirely through international and regional auction houses, with market databases indicating sustained but hard-to-verify activity and no confirmed headline price. With no catalogue raisonne in place, provenance research and comparison against documented sales become the main tools for authentication. Public museum holdings for this artist are not clearly documented in accessible sources, and collectors should treat any museum attribution claims for this artist with caution until verified directly with the institution in question.