Alois Josef BENEDICTER

Alois Josef Benedicter was born in Dischingen on June 4, 1843, the son of a master dyer. His artistic career began at the age of fourteen when he was apprenticed to his cousin, the church and decorative painter Mathias Stadler, in Kelheim. In 1861, Benedicter moved to Stuttgart, where he worked for a decorative painter. Between 1863 and 1870, he continued his studies at the renowned Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he was taught by renowned artists such as Hermann Anschütz, Georg Hiltensperger, Alexander Strähuber and Sándor Wagner.

After graduating, Benedicter concentrated primarily on large-format architectural paintings. However, an injury he suffered during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 forced him to switch to smaller formats. During trips to the Netherlands and Belgium, Benedicter discovered Dutch genre painting and began to create genre paintings as well as architectural pictures and interiors. In 1876, Benedicter undertook a trip to Italy.

After his marriage in 1879, Benedicter settled in Rothenburg ob der Tauber. In 1893, the family moved to Pasing, now a district of Munich, where Benedicter became a member of the Munich Artists’ Cooperative in the same year. In his later work, Benedicter devoted himself increasingly to landscape painting, although he also created figurative depictions. Peter Wiench describes Benedicter’s style in the Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon as “technically perfect, vividly designed and oriented towards Dutch genre and landscape painting”.

Alois Josef Benedicter died on April 14, 1931 in Pasing, today a district of Munich.