Emil Jacob Schindler (1842, Vienna-1892, Vienna) was the son of a wealthy manufacturing family, Jakob and Maria Penz Schindler. His parents meant for him to have a military career, but instead at 18 he entered the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, studying under Albert Zimmermann who also taught famed artists Eugen Jettel, Rudolf Ribarz and Robert Russ. While other local artists like Jettel and Ribarz spent years in France and had been exposed to the plein air style, Emil Schindler was more influenced by his travel within Austria, Switzerland and Germany and study of 17th century Dutch painters. He moved away from the predominant Austrian “atmospheric realism” as it was taught at the Vienna Academy and through his study of Corot and Daubigny, developed a sketch-like style of painting he called “poetic realism”.

In early 1879 Schindler married the singer Anna Sofie Bergen, who was already three months pregnant. The financial circumstances of the couple were very dire and they had to share their apartment with friend and fellow artist, Julius Victor Berger. In February 1881, Schindler won a prize of named the Reichel-Artist Award , which ended the financial distress of the family and made it possible to move to a larger apartment.

Winning the Reichel was followed by a series of sales and commissions, allowing the family relative prosperity. In 1885, Schindler spent the summer in Plankenberg, Lower Austria and soon it became home to an artists' colony taught by Schindler. In 1887 Schindler was awarded a major commission by the Austrian Crown Prince which included painting watercolor and ink views of coastal towns in Dalmatia and Greece. The name of the project was The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in Words and Pictures, which was to be published by the Crown. With this commission Schindler became one of the most important painters of the imperial monarchy.

Less fortunate was his private life. His wife had an affair with their house-mate Julius Berger and a new love affair with Schindler's student and assistant Carl Moll , which lasted several years. Emil Jakob Schindler died at the height of his success on 9 August 1892 from the effects of a protracted appendicitis . His widow re-married in 1895 to Carl Moll.

Schindler received an honorary grave and monument in the Wien Central Cemetery designed by sculptor Edmund Hellmer. Schindler was arguably the most important Austrian landscape painter of the second half of the 19th century

Awards: 1887 Honorary member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna; 1888 Honorary membership of the Munich Academy; 1891 Golden State Medal.

Museums: Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna; The Universalmuseum Joanneum, Styria, Austria; Wien Castle Museum, Vienna; Vienna Museum, Vienna; Landemuseum St. Pölten, Austria.

Sources: Benezit’s Art Dictionary; German Wikipedia; Kunsthandel Giese und Schweiger.

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