Johann Georg Edlinger

1741 – 1819

Johann (Josef) Georg Edlinger was an Austrian portrait painter. He was the son of Josef Edlinger, a gardener, and his wife Therese. His father recognised his creative abilities and he received the first artistic lessons in his home town. In 1752 he became an apprentice of the church painter Embert. At 17 he left the workshop and wandered during the following three years in Austria and Hungary. Then he returned to Graz. In 1765 he went to Vienna and became an assistant in the studio of the painter Tuchmeyer. At the end of 1774 he became a student of the court painter Franz Ignaz Oefele at the Royal School of Drawing in Munich. In 1775 in Munich, Edlinger married Maria Anna Barbara Wels, and they had six children. He was appointed by the Elector Karl Theodor as court painter in 1781 at a small salary, but later he seems to have lost favour and in 1819 died impoverished. Today he is regarded as a competent 18th century portraitist</Ay and several of his paintings are in the possession of the Munich Neue Pinakothek art gallery. He is the author of a controversial portrait of Mozart exhibited in the Staatliche Museen in Berlin.

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