Karl Josef Aigen
1685–1762 · Holy Roman Empire · Baroque
The story
Two small, crowded scenes in the Belvedere, a Parish Fair and a Fair Before a City Gate, show what Karl Josef Aigen liked to paint most, village festivities filled with little figures, in a manner that owes much to painters from France and the Low Countries.
He was born in 1685 in Olomouc in Moravia, the son of a goldsmith, and learned his craft there under the local painter Dominik Maier. Around 1720 he settled in Vienna, entered its Academy of Fine Arts in about 1728 and became professor of painting there in 1751. After the death of the academy's director Jacob van Schuppen, he took turns with the fresco painter Josef Ignaz Mildorfer in running the painting school. Besides genre scenes he painted landscapes with figures and altarpieces. He died in 1762 at his home on Kohlmessergasse in the centre of Vienna.
