You are here:  HomeArtists › Füger

Heinrich Friedrich Füger

Born: Heilbronn, 8 December 1751
Died: Vienna, 5 November 1818
Nationality: German
Studies: 

drawing lessons from Nicolas Guibal at Hohe Karlsschule (1764, Stuttgart); school of Adam Friedrich Oeser (1771, Leipzig)

Career: 

1770s – famous for portrait miniatures on ivory

1774 – Sir Robert Murray Keith (British Ambassador) brings Füger to the Austrian court

1776 –travel scholarship to Italy, arrives in Rome and meets Jacques-Louis David, Anton Raphael Mengs, and Angelica Kauffmann

1783 – returns to Vienna; vice-director of Academy of Fine Arts

1795 – appointed director of Academy and Court Painter

1798 – eye ailment forces Füger to stop painting miniatures, focuses on large-scale works

1806 –director of the Viennese imperial gallery

Travels 

Vienna (1774, 1783-1818), Rome (1776-83) 

Important Artworks: 

School of Athens, before 1783 (Palazzo Reale, Caserta)

Death of Germanicus, 1815 (Belvedere Museum, Vienna)

Execution of a Vestel, c. 1800 (Hermitage, St Petersburg)