Personalities Weirotter, Franz Edmund

Austrian landscape painter and engraver. He received his first painting lessons in Innsbruck with Franz Michael Huber. In 1751–1755, he studied at the Vienna Academy of Arts. After graduating from the academy, he performed works for art traders and other customers. In 1759–1763, he worked in Paris, where he met Johann Georg Wille, who trained him to work on plein air. Later Wairotter used these patterns for his etchings. In 1763– 1764, he was in Rome, Italy where he met with I. I. Winkelmann and A. R. Mengs, as well as with leading German and French artists. While in Italy, he visited the outskirts of Rome and Tivoli, Livorno, Viterbo and Florence. In 1764–1767, he returned to Paris, where he met with the Austrian artist J. M. Shmutzer, Wille’s student. In 1766, Shmutzer, the director of the newly founded Vienna Academy of Engraving, invited him to become a teacher of landscape painting of the Academy.