SCHROTZBERG, FRANZ (1811-1889)

"Frauenporträt" (1843)
Pencil
21 x 19cm
Signed lower right
*private collection, Sydney
 
Schrotzberg was an acclaimed Austrian Court painter and premier female portrait painter. He was a student at the Vienna Academy from 1825 to 1831. In 1827 he received a scholarship, in 1828 he was awarded three prizes. At the age of 19, his friendship with the landscape painter Karl Marko began, who influenced him artistically, although Schrotzberg soon turned to portraiture. In 1832 he exhibited portraits and mythological scenes in St. Anna for the first time. In 1837 he went on a study trip to Italy, in 1842 he visited Germany and Belgium. He later toured Northern Italy, London and Paris. Since around 1840 he was one of the most sought-after painters of representative female portraits in Vienna. His opulent style was controversial even among his contemporaries. The Viennese art critic Ludwig Hevesi judged in 1903: “His competitor and successor [meaning Friedrich von Amerling] in the favor of the beautiful clientele was the silky smooth Franz Schrotzberg [...], a mild Viennese Winterhalter, whose portraits on the walls of all aristocratic and Hanging citizen palaces. He was lucky enough to be able to paint the youthful beauty of Empress Elisabeth, which made him even more the painter of the beautiful world. His student Ernst Lafite (1826–1885) then continued him. "His oil paintings of the imperial family and the nobility often served as a template for portrait lithographs by Josef Kriehuber, August Prinzhofer, Adolf Dauthage and Franz Eybl. In 1843 he became a member of the academy. In 1867 he was awarded the Franz Joseph Order. Schrotzbergstraße was named after him in Vienna-Leopoldstadt (2nd district) in 1899.