As the son of a sculptor, Franz Steinfeld first completed an apprenticeship with his father
before enrolling at the academy with Lorenz Janscha in 1802. He continued his education
on numerous trips to southern Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, Switzerland and Holland,
where he was particularly impressed by the art of Ruysdael. He became a member of the
Vienna Academy in 1823, a corrector in 1837, an academic councillor in 1845 and a
professor shortly afterwards. In 1850, he became head of the school of landscape
painting at the academy. He found a great patron in Archduke Anton of Austria, who
appointed Steinfeld his “chamber painter”. Many important Austrian landscape painters
emerged from Steinfeld's class, including Carl Vöscher, Ludwig Halauska, Josef Holzer,
Eduard von Lichtenfels and August von Schaeffer, and he was an admired role model as a
teacher. The main theme of Austrian Biedermeier painting was the exploration of nature
and Franz Steinfeld was one of the first to “go out and bring the world, as it is, home to
the studio”. The result of intensive nature studies were exact landscape photographs that
could be precisely defined in terms of time and atmosphere. Steinfeld is regarded as the
founder of realistic landscape painting in the first half of the 19th century. While
Steinfeld's early works were still characterised by a reverential and awe-inspiring
understanding of nature, which expressed the grandeur of creation by emphasising the
heroic element, in the course of his artistic development the pathos gave way to an
increasingly serene, calmer, more idyllic mood.
Literature:
L. Hevesi, Österreichische Kunst im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, Leipzig 1903, p. 90ff; P.
Pötschner, Franz Steinfeld und die Überwindung des Barock in der Wiener
Landschaftsmalerei, Phil.Diss., Vienna 1951; "Die Alpen im Blick. The landscape painterFranz Steinfeld. Insert: Hubert Schmalix", ed.: Gudrun Danzer, Günther Holler-Schuster,
Neue Galerie Graz / UMJ, Graz 2023; reference works: Wurzbach, Thieme-Becker, Müller-
Singer, Boetticher, Bénézit, Busse no. 76943