Franz Xaver Kosler

Biography of Franz Xaver Kosler ( 1864-1905 )

Austrian painter Franz Xaver Kosler was admitted to the general painting class at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in 1881, before studying at the special school with Leopold Carl Müller, Austria's most famous Orientalist painter. Müller had a major influence on Kosler's pictorial choices, particularly in his genre scenes and portraits of young Arab men and women.

In 1886, he undertook a study trip to Dalmatia (present-day Croatia), Montenegro and Albania, then in 1892, encouraged by Müller, he visited Egypt for the first time. His second trip to Egypt in 1894 was subsidized by Archduke Karl Ferdinand, of whom he painted two portraits. That year, he held his first exhibition in Cairo and met with great success, with portrait commissions pouring in from Prince Said Halim Pasha, grandson of Mohammed-Ali and future Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. The prince also bought other works from him, including “Fellah à l'enfant”.

In Cairo, where he lived for several winters, he met some very wealthy English buyers, who enabled him to exhibit two paintings at the Royal Academy in London, “A Vegetable Vendor in Cairo” and “A Blind Beggar”. In 1895, he exhibited for the first time at the Küntlerhaus in Vienna and became a member of the Société des Artistes Peintres in 1901. In the years that followed, he exhibited regularly at the Vienna Salons. He also exhibited at Munich's Glaspalast in 1899. Highly appreciated by the English public, a presentation of his works was made at the Royal Academy in London in 1906, a few months after his death.