Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller (1751–1811) was a Swedish painter who worked in France and the United States, producing portraits and mythological pictures. Born in Stockholm, he studied painting in Sweden before moving to Paris in 1772, where he trained with Joseph-Marie Vien. He later travelled to Italy and returned to France, gaining commissions among royal and fashionable patrons.
Wertmüller was appointed court painter to Gustav III of Sweden and painted a portrait of Marie Antoinette. His Danaë and the Shower of Gold (1787) depicts the Greek myth in which Zeus reaches Danaë in the form of golden rain. The large oil painting, now at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, demonstrates his interest in classical subject matter and the smooth finish of late eighteenth-century academic painting.
Following the upheavals of the French Revolution, Wertmüller travelled to America in 1794, where he painted George Washington and members of Philadelphia society. He became an American citizen in 1802 and settled on a farm near the Delaware River.
His career spans the Swedish court, the Paris art world and early American portraiture. Wertmüller died in 1811.
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Wertmüller, Adolf Ulrik (1751-1811) - Danae and the Shower of Gold 1787
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