Josef Plank (painter, 1815)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Self-Portrait (1893)

Josef Plank (born August 9, 1815 in Hall in Tirol ; † January 13, 1901 in Vienna ) was an Austrian portrait and history painter .

life and work

Portrait of Anna Reitter with a red cloth (1858)

Josef Plank was born as the son of master potter Josef Plank and his wife Gertraud, née Kirchmair, born in Hall. His talent for drawing was already evident in elementary school. He did not attend middle school and is said to have trained with an insignificant painter in Hall. For military service he came to an Kaiserjäger regiment, where he was mainly used in the office because of his beautiful handwriting. He attracted the attention of his superiors with smaller paintings, decorative disks, coats of arms and the like for shooting ranges. The Kaiserjäger Colonel Heinrich von Roßbach became his sponsor, and Plank created portraits of several families of officers.

With the support of Roßbach he was able to attend the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and studied with Peter von Cornelius and Josef Stieler . After two years he returned to Innsbruck. In 1845/46 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna under Leopold Kupelwieser and Joseph von Führich , where he was trained as a history and fresco painter in the style of the Nazarenes . He also worked as a portrait painter, on the recommendation of his Tyrolean patrons, mainly in military circles. Plank stayed in Vienna and ran a studio at Gumpendorfer Strasse 29 in the 6th district . He was regularly represented in the monthly exhibitions of the Vienna Artists' Association.

When Führich and Kupelwieser painted the Altlerchenfeld parish church from 1854 to 1861 , Plank was involved alongside Karl Blaas and Karl Mayer . From then on he devoted himself entirely to religious history painting and created frescoes and above all altarpieces for churches throughout Austria-Hungary, including the Franciscan Church in Laibach (1861), the Fiecht Collegiate Church  (1875) or the parish church Mistelbach (1880), but also in Egypt or for the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. He hardly painted any portraits any more and instead tried his hand at landscapes .

When he was already living in Vienna, he married a Maria from Hall. The couple's only daughter died at a young age. Plank was friends with Friedrich von Amerling  and went on a study trip to Italy in 1870. His student was Anton Jehly . In 1901 he died after a short illness and was buried at the Hütteldorfer Friedhof .

literature

Web links

Commons : Josef Plank  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Plank, Josef
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Plank, Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian painter
DATE OF BIRTH August 9, 1815
PLACE OF BIRTH Hall in Tirol
DATE OF DEATH January 13, 1901
Place of death Vienna