Portrait of the author´s friend Austrian painter and cour garden director Franz Antoine, painter and court garden director ( 1815 - Vienna - 1886 ). The son of the court gardener and pomologist Franz de Paula Antoine (1768-1834) attended landscape school at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna from 1827 to 1833. In 1850, as director of the court garden, he designed the square in front of the Vienna Hofburg (today: Heldenplatz) and in 1884 the Volksgarten. Antoine created landscape paintings and lithographs for his books (such as The Winter Garden of the k. K. Hofburg zu Wien, 1852) and participated in exhibitions in Vienna (1864) and Paris (1867). In addition, as an amateur photographer, he dealt with plant studies.

The author of our portrait is Important Austrian portrait painter Tom von Dreger ( 1868 Bron - 1948 Vienna). He studied in the years from 1884 to 1885 and from 1887 to 1888 at the Academy of fine arts in Vienna, his teachers there were August Eisenmenger, Siegmund L´Allemand and Heinrich von Angeli. He then went on study trips to Venice, where he took lessons from Eugene de Blaas and Ludwig Passini at the Accademia di belle arti di Venezia. He then studied for a year at the Munich Academy with Alexander von Liezen-Mayer, before he went to the prestigious Académie Julian in Paris for seven years, where he worked at the Salon de la Société nationale des beaux-arts from 1893 to 1899 exhibited under the name TR de Dreger.

After his stay in Paris he lived in his house in Nussschloss. In 1906, Tom von Dreger finally settled in Vienna, [2] from where he made numerous study trips to Transylvania, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Holland and the United States. In Vienna in 1916 he made two altarpieces for the Votive Church and became the preferred portraitist of the Austrian imperial family and Viennese society.

Over the years he has created countless portraits of statesmen and churchmen as well as leading personalities from business, science and the arts across Europe and overseas. Most of his pictures are now in private ownership, but also in state collections, such as the painting collection of the Vienna Army History Museum or in public buildings such as the Federal Ministry for Education, Art and Culture and the Historical Museum in Vienna.

Literature: Thieme/Becker "Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künsler..", Leipzig, 1999; Prof.H.Fuchs "Austrian Artists" Vienna, 1975 (both in German).

Inscription: signed with monogramm and dated 1911, upper right, on the back of original frame - exhibiton label of Viennese artist union Kuenstlerhaus with inventory number and dating 1911; on the back of the canvas: old inscription with the name of the sitter and the author.

Technique: oil on canvas. Original period gilt frame.

Measurements: unframed w 22 3/4" x h 28" (58 x 71 cm), framed w 30 3/4" x h 35 3/4" (78 x 91cm).

Condition: in very good condition.