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DRECHSLER, Johann Baptist - b. 1756 Wien, d. 1811 Wien - WGA

DRECHSLER, Johann Baptist

(b. 1756 Wien, d. 1811 Wien)

Austrian flower painter who began his artistic career painting porcelain at the young age of 16. As his talent grew so did his position at the Academy in Vienna. He became Professor and by 1807 he was given the post of Director of Porcelain Design at the Vienna Academy.

Drechsler’s flower compositions show the influence of the Dutch still life-painting of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, in particular that of Jan van Huysum. Works of the painter in oil, dated 1790-1809, are found in museums in Vienna, Weimar, Budapest, Frankfurt, Melk, Prague and St. Petersburg

Still-Life with Flowers, Fruit and Birds in the Open
Still-Life with Flowers, Fruit and Birds in the Open by

Still-Life with Flowers, Fruit and Birds in the Open

Johann Baptist Drechsler was an Austrian painter specialised in flower painting. He was the director of a branch of the Vienna Academy for “schooling taste and the art of invention.”

The present still-life was his reception piece submitted for the Academy in 1789. It shows that the painter was still firmly attached to late seventeenth-century principles of composition exemplified by Dutch artists such as Matthias Withoos. In Holland it was a known practice to integrate a decorative flower piece in the ambiance of a forest floor with birds and insects, towered over by stone monuments.

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