Franz de Paula Ferg

Fair with Merlon-Crowned Keep, a small painting on copper in the Belvedere, sets a village fair beneath a castle tower. Markets, fairs and village life crowded with small figures were Franz de Paula Ferg's speciality.

He was born in Vienna in 1689, the son of the history painter Adam Pancraz Ferg. As a young man he studied the prints of Jacques Callot, the Lorraine engraver of crowds and fairs, and their tiny lively figures shaped his own. He then lived for three years with the Viennese landscape painter Joseph Orient and painted the figures into Orient's landscapes. In 1718 he left Vienna, worked for some years at Bamberg, and went on to Dresden with the landscape painter Alexander Thiele.

He ended in London, where there was work for him but his circumstances declined. Early accounts blamed an unwise marriage and his own carelessness. The London picture dealer Noel Desenfans told it differently, saying a falling roof tile had struck Ferg's head and left him unable to paint. In 1740 he was found dead in the street near his lodgings, destitute.