Ferdinand Runk

1764 – 1834

German painter and etcher. In 1785 Runk came to Vienna and studied there at the Academy of Visual Art. Johann Christian Brand and Martin Molitor, significant landscape painters, performed their work at the Vienna Academy in that time. Their relationship with the real nature, their sensitive access to the light and changes of weather influenced very soon the masterpieces of the young Runk. Just after the graduation at the Academy, Runk turned into a popular artist, particularly for the enjoyable variety of colours applied in his gouache landscape paintings. However he created oil-paintings as well. The gouache technique became the most proper manner of the Runk's artistic expression. At the beginning of the 19th century he entered the Schwarzenberg service as court painter and landscape-painter. Prince Josef zu Schwarzenberg entrusted him to paint most of the family estates in Bohemia and Austria. Similarly, Prince Johann I von Liechtenstein commissioned him to make a pictorial record of his estates in Vienna, Lower Austria, Bohemia and southern Moravia. From 1803 Ferdinand Runk worked as a princely painter and a teacher of painting in Bohemia.

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