Alpine landscape with a prayer at the mountain chapel in the Austrian Alps was executed by Austrian landscape  and architectural painter as well as engraver Ernst Welcker (1784 Gotha - 1857 Vienna). 
He was initially a student at the Weimar Free Drawing Institute under the engraver Johann Christian Ernst Müller (1766–1824). He then studied from 1804 to 1808 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. As a volunteer Lützow hunter, he took part in the wars of liberation and was an eyewitness to the death of Theodor Körner (1791–1813).

With his friends Johann Christoph Erhard (1795-1822), Johann Adam Klein (1792-1875) and the brothers Friedrich Philipp Reinhold (1779-1840) and Heinrich Reinhold (1788-1825) he went on a study trip through the Salzkammergut in 1818.

In 1817 he undertook the next study trip to Lower Austria, to the Schneeberg area and to Höllenberg with Heinrich Philipp Reinhold and Johann Christian Erhard. In Vienna, Ernst Welker was a member of the Nonsense Society. In 1818 and 1819 he worked as a drawing teacher and caricaturist at the “Musenhof Löbichau” castle of Duchess Dorothea of Courland.

He spent the period from 1821 to 1828 in Rome, after which he settled in Vienna. In 1837 he visited the countries of the Middle East.

Welker created landscapes and architectural views from the surroundings of Vienna, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Switzerland and Italy. He was a full member of the Association for the Promotion of Fine Arts in Vienna.

Literature: all in German: “General Artist´s Lexicon " by Thieme/Becker, Leipzig, 1999; Prof. H.Fuchs "Die Österreichische Maler des 19 und 20 Jahrhunderts", Vienna, 1975

Inscription: signed lower left.

Technique:  framed oil on canvas. .

Measurements: unframed w 10 1/3" x h 14 3/4" (26,5 x 37,5 cm), framed w 14 1/8" x h 18 1/2" (36 x 47 cm)

Condition: in good original condition