Jakob Matthias Schmutzer
1733- Vienna - 1811
Portrait of a young Boy
red chalk
73 x 61,5 cm
Jakob Matthias Schmutzer was trained at the Vienna Academy by recommendation from Wenzel Fürst Liechtenstein. In 1762, Empress Maria Theresa sent him to the studio of Johann Georg Wille in Paris, where he quickly became his best student and Wille entrusted him with the founding of a drawing school for German students in Paris. His accomplished technique of numerous red chalk drawings goes back to his training in Paris. In 1766 he returned to Vienna and founded the Vienna Academy of Engraving. Through its unification with the established Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in 1772, Schmutzer gained further influence.
Franz Anton Maulbertsch's admission piece "Allegory on the Fate of Art" to Schmutzer's Academy in 1770 was praised as excellent in its poetic and painterly invention and arrangement. In 1780, Schmutzer's daughter married Franz Anton Maulbertsch.