Duveneck was born Francis Decker in October of 1848 in Covington. His parents, Bernard and Katherine Decker, had come to Kentucky from Westphalia. Bernard, a cobbler, died during the 1849 cholera epidemic, which swept through the Northern Kentucky area. Katherine's second husband, Joseph Duveneck, adopted her son, who from then on was known as Frank Duveneck.[19] Young Frank grew up near St. Joseph church on Greenup and 12^th streets. (Figure 6, Photograph of Frank Duveneck's house and birthplace, Covington, KY. Figure 7, Photograph of Frank Duveneck, 1874). The Diocese of Covington had purchased this property for the local German Catholic community. St. Joseph church had been blessed in 1859, and the first group of Benedictine Sisters arrived from Erie, Pennsylvania, to teach the German children at the St. Joseph parochial school. The Sisters had been called to North America from the Benedictine Abbey at Eichstätt in Bavaria by Boniface Wimmer.[20] Frank Duveneck was one of their students at St. Joseph school.

    The date 1864 on an easel painting of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception by the young artist proves that he had advanced far enough by that time to paint in oils. (Figure 8, Frank Duveneck, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception). His painting is part of the art collections of St. Vincent Archabbey of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where a great number of religious art works from Germany had been received by Boniface Wimmer through the Ludwig-Misssionsverein. It is quite possible that Cosmas Wolf and/or Johann Schmitt had taken the young Duveneck along on a trip to St. Vincent to introduce him to the art collections. While he studied the German paintings in Latrobe, he left his devotional canvas of the Immaculate Conception as a token of gratitude to his hosts.[21] The style of Duveneck's youthful painting follows that of his German-American teacher Johann Schmitt. As a matter of fact, Schmitt had painted the Immaculate Conception one year earlier, in 1863, over the Marian altar at the Holy Family Church in Oldenburg, Indiana. (Figure 9, Johann Schmitt, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, 1863).  The two images - one by the master, the other by the apprentice - are nearly identical: The Virgin stands on the half moon with twelve stars painted behind her head. She has placed her right hand over her heart and carries a lily in her left hand. The image is derived from St. John's visions experienced on the island of Patmos and written down in Revelation 12:1 [22] The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception was declared by Pope Pius IX in 1854. It affirms that the Holy Spirit entered St. Anne, the Virgin Mary's mother, and that Mary was conceived without carnal sin.

   In the true spirit of medieval apprenticeship, Frank Duveneck followed his German masters in style and imagery. Between 1863 and 1867 the aspiring young painter worked closely with Johann Schmitt and traveled to distant locations with him. He is said to have assisted Schmitt with the altarpieces at the Holy Family Church in Oldenburg, Indiana. [23]  When Wilhelm Lamprecht joined the Covington Altar Building Stock Company in 1867, Frank Duveneck accompanied him on several occasions to assist with frescoes and altar paintings in Louisville, Kentucky, at St. Mary's, Pennsylvania, and in the Canadian province of Quebec, where Lamprecht had been commissioned to decorate the church of St. Romuald d'Etchemin in 1868.[24]

   As a member of the German Catholic community in Covington and the St. Joseph parish, Frank Duveneck dedicated several art works to the local religious establishments. For the church of St. Joseph he painted fourteen large panels of the Stations of the Cross. According to church records, the young artist executed this group during 1866 and 1867 about the time Johann Schmitt decorated three altars at St. Joseph.[25] During 1867 he also painted a Madonna and Child for the Benedictine Sisters of Covington's St. Walburg Convent, Villa Hills, Kentucky. (Figure 10, Frank Duveneck, Madonna and Child). The Sisters still treasure this canvas, which is a charming depiction of a very young Madonna with a cherubic infant. Unfortunately St. Joseph church was razed in 1970, and Duveneck's Stations of the Cross have been dispersed.

   Cosmas Wolf, Johann Schmitt, and Wilhelm Lamprecht urged Duveneck's parents to allow him to study at Munich's Royal Academy of Art, and the young painter left for Germany in the autumn of 1869. He arrived with the intent to pursue his studies of religious art with the renowned Johann von Schraudolph, but the style of the Nazarenes' fifteenth century tight, linear forms no longer appealed to a younger generation of students. They preferred the realistic, impressionistic manner of Wilhelm von Diez and Wilhelm Leibl, who also taught at the Royal Academy. Frank Duveneck joined the young Realists.[26] In time he established himself as a brilliant pathfinder of new directions in American art and the founder of American Impressionism. Some of Duveneck's famous pupils included: William M. Chase, Joseph R. DeCamp, John Twachtman, and James A.M. Whistler

    In 1873 Frank Duveneck returned to Covington and for a brief period of time took up decorating churches once more. He teamed up with Wenceslaus Thien, who was a member of the Cincinnati Society of Christian Art, and specialized in painting abstract, neo-classical motifs on church columns, ceilings, and walls. One of Duveneck's biographers reports that the two traveled to Chicago, Kansas City, and other Midwest communities, to fulfill commissions. None of these church decorations have survived.[27] Frank Duveneck returned to Munich in 1875 and later lived and taught in Florence, Italy, and in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1900 he accepted an appointment as professor at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, He died in 1919 in his family home in Covington. His graveside is in the same cemetery of Latonia, Kentucky, where his first teacher, Johann Schmitt, was laid to rest.

     Late in his life Frank Duveneck had returned to his Catholic faith and to religious themes, when he painted four murals in the Blessed Sacrament chapel at the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, which is the seat of the Catholic Diocese of Covington. The building of the church was begun in 1895 as a French Gothic structure and modeled on the exterior of Notre Dame in Paris. (Figure 11, Basilica of the Assumption, Covington, KY).  The interior resembles the Paris Abbey church of Saint Denis. (Figure 12, Basilica of the Assumption, Covington, KY).  Duveneck's paintings celebrate the mystery of the Eucharist. The artist dedicated them to the memory of his mother. Gone are the dark colors, the flat shapes and stiff gestures of his youthful religious art. In the central panel of the triptych on the east wall of the chapel, Mary Magdalene is alone at the foot of the cross, where Christ has taken on the sins of humanity. The crumpled figure of the Magdalene is surrounded by a great void. She is raising her hands in supplication, and her agony is almost physically transmitted to the viewer who cannot see her face. The artist has portrayed her from a bird's eye view as if he were positioned between heaven and earth. Neither Johann Schmitt nor Wilhelm Lamprecht ever achieved such emotional depth and drama, but their religious faith still influenced their famous pupil many years after his apprenticeship with them. (Figure 13, Frank Duveneck, Crucifixion,). Their names might be unfamiliar to many students of art today, but the German-American church artists, associated with the Covington Altar Building Stock Company, left an important legacy for a succeeding generation of U.S. painters.