With Johann Baptiste Bastiné
With Heinrich Christoph Kolbe and Theodor Hildebrandt at Düsseldorf Academy (Staatliche Kunstakademie)
With Nazarene Philip Veit at Frankfurt Academy (Städelsche Kunstinstitut)
1836 – moves to Frankfurt
1839 –first commission: paintings of Holy Roman Emperors for the Kaisersaal (Emperors’ Room) in the Old City Hall
1839-40 –commission from Frankfurter Kunstverein for Reconciliation between Otto the Great and his Brother Heinrich (1840, Historisches Museum, Frankfurt)
1840 – wins Rheinland-Westfalen Kunstverein (art association) competition for paintings depicting the life of Charlemagne for the Krönungssaal (crown room) in the Aachen city hall
1846 – appeals to Frederick William IV (King of Prussia) for approval of the Krönungssaal designs
1849 – publishes Another Dance of Death: From the Year 1848 (Auch ein Totentanz: Aus dem Jahre 1848)
Rome (1844-45; 1852-53)
Frederick William IV (King of Prussia)
The Harkort Factory in Burg Wetter, 1834 (private collection)
Another Dance of Death, 1849
Boime, Albert. “Alfred Rethel’s Counterrevolutionary Death Dance,” Art Bulletin, vol. 73, no. 4 (December 1991): 577-98
Paret, Peter. “The German Revolution of 1848 and Rethel’s Dance of Death,” Journal of
Interdisciplinary History, vol. 17, no. 1 (Summer 1986): 233-55