Albert Schindler

The painter Peter Fendi, the leading master of small Viennese genre scenes, was travelling through Austrian Silesia when he noticed a weaver's boy who could draw. He persuaded the family to let him take the child to Vienna, and Albrecht Schindler, born in 1805 in the village of Engelsberg, grew up in Fendi's household as his pupil.

From 1827 he studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, and from 1828 he also worked beside Fendi at the imperial coin and antiquities cabinet, drawing and engraving pieces from the collection. His own paintings stayed close to his teacher's manner, small Biedermeier scenes of everyday life and above all the families of soldiers, their partings, homecomings and losses.

The Belvedere's panel from 1834 belongs to that world. It is barely 30 centimetres tall, painted on wood, and shows a wounded officer receiving the last rites.

When Fendi died in 1842, Schindler took over his post at the coin cabinet, and the official work took up most of his time. From then on he worked mainly as an engraver of medals and catalogue plates, and in 1856 he was put in charge of the collection at Ambras Castle near Innsbruck. He died in Vienna in 1861.