PAINTING PALACE
Source Supplier of Oil Paintings

Franz Ludwig Catel made a name for himself primarily as a painter of brightly coloured, festive Italian folk scenes. Originally a wood carver and graphic artist, he turned his attention to landscape painting around the year 1800. After training in Berlin and Paris he went to Rome in 1811, joining the circle of artists grouped around Joseph Anton Koch, the most important of German painters in Rome.

In Catel's paintings the landscape itself plays a secondary role to the artist's main subject, staffage figures in a landscape setting. His paintings are accordingly more genre than landscape works. Owing to his depiction of the lively hustle and bustle and a sure hand for the right coloration his works were greeted with great enthusiasm by the financially-strong consumer class, and accordingly brought him considerable prosperity. This in turn allowed him to set up a fund for young artists in Rome, financed solely through Catel's private fortune.

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