Peter Fendi

Peter Fendi (4 September 1796 – 28 August 1842)[1] was an Austrian court painter,[2] portrait and genre painter, engraver, and lithographer.[3] He was one of the leading artists of the Biedermeier period.[4]

Peter Fendi was born in Vienna on 4 September 1796 to Joseph and Elizabeth Fendi. His father was a schoolmaster.[1] He fell from a changing table as an infant, an accident which caused irreparable damage to his spine.[5] Fendi demonstrated a talent for drawing from childhood. He was admitted to the St. Anna’s Academy of Fine Art[1] in 1810[5] at the age of thirteen, where he studied for three years[1] under Johann Martin Fischer [de], Hubert Maurer and Johann Baptist von Lampi the Elder.[5]

Fendi met Joseph Barth, an art collector and the personal ophthalmologist of Joseph II, and through Barth’s connections to other influential artists, in 1818 Fendi found a job at the Imperial Gallery of Coins and Antiquities,[1][6][7] where he worked as a draughtsman and engraver.[8] Fendi received a gold medal in 1821 for his oil painting Vilenica,[9] and was elected a member of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 1836.[8]

Both nobles and commoners occasionally employed Fendi to give instruction in drawing and painting, and later in life teaching took up more of his time; his pupils included Carl Schindler and Johann Friedrich Treml [de].[10] He died on 28 August 1842.[1]