Josef Engelhart

Josef Anton Engelhart was born in Vienna on August 19, 1864 and died in the same city on December 19, 1941. He was an Austrian painter and sculptor and played an important role in Vienna’s art scene around 1900. He was also one of the co-founders of the Vienna Secession.

Josef Engelhart came from a family of artists. His parents were the butcher Josef Anton Engelhart (1838-1900) and Maria Apfelthaler (1842-1933). He grew up in Erdberg and first attended the Oberrealschule in Radetzkystraße before studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and later at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. There he was taught by renowned teachers such as Gabriel von Hackl, Johann Caspar Herterich and Ludwig Löfftz.

After his return to Vienna in 1887, Engelhart joined the Hagengesellschaft artists’ association and became a member of the Genossenschaft bildender Künstler Wiens. His works were first exhibited in Vienna in 1888. He later traveled to Paris and Spain before finally settling in Vienna.

Engelhart was an important representative of the Vienna Secession, a movement that split off from the conservative tendencies of the Vienna Künstlerhaus. He even assumed the presidency of this association for a time. His intensive travel activities and organizational skills contributed significantly to the success of the Secession.

As an artist, Engelhart devoted himself above all to the depiction of people in his works, whether in nudes, portraits or social scenes. His painting was influenced by French Impressionism, which is particularly evident in his treatment of color and light.

After the outbreak of the First World War, Engelhart became actively involved in helping the wounded and volunteered to go to the front as a war painter. His works from this period reflect the suffering and misery of war.

Despite his former fame, Engelhart was increasingly forgotten after his death. It is only in recent years that his work has been rediscovered and is once again receiving more attention. His daughter Elisabeth was married to the physicist and inventor Robert von Neumann-Ettenreich, known as Robert Ettenreich after 1919.