Emil Jakob Schindler

Emil Jakob Schindler was an Austrian landscape painter. His eldest daughter was the author and composer, Alma Mahler.

He was born to a family of cotton spinning-mill operators that had been established in Fischamend, a village south of Vienna, since the 17th century. His father, Julius Jakob Schindler (1814-1846), died of lung cancer when Emil was only four years old. His mother, Maria Anna (née Penz, 1816-1886) soon afterwards took him to Pressburg (Bratislava). Three years later, on 10 February 1849, she married Second Lieutenant (later Captain), Mathias Eduard Nepalleck (1815-1873), who served in the local 2nd Hungarian Infantry Regiment. This may have been a forced marriage because, one month after the wedding, she gave birth to a daughter, Alexandrine Nepalleck (3 March 1849 - 4 September 1932).

Little is known about Schindler's early life. He probably began school in 1848, took piano lessons, and prepared for a military career. He did, in fact, join the army in 1857, and may have taken part in the Battle of Solferino. Not long after, however, he left the army and, in 1860, entered the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, where he studied with Albert Zimmermann. He found his inspiration, however, in the Dutch Masters such as Meindert Hobbema and Jacob Izaaksoon van Ruisdael. In 1873, he travelled to Venice and Dalmatia; a trip sponsored by the industrialist Friedrich Franz von Leitenberger (1837-1899). Later, he visited France and Holland.

In the spring of 1864, barely twenty-two years old, he exhibited publicly in Vienna for the first time, and sold his first painting, "Eine Waldschmiede" (A Forest Blacksmith) for 350 Gulden. After moving about, in 1867 he was able to find a permanent home in Landstraße, where he was registered as an "Historienmaler" (History painter). Two years later, he relocated to Wieden, where many artists lived, including one of Schindler's favorites, Hans Makart. When his step-father died, he took a larger apartment where his mother and half-sister soon joined him.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023