August Prinzhofer
August Prinzhofer was an Austrian painter and lithographer.Life
August Prinzhofer came from a long-established Carinthian family and showed great talent for drawing even as a child. He studied law in Vienna and Padua. He worked in a civil court in Vienna from 1844 onwards as well as a simultaneous and successful career as a portraitist, until in 1854 he gave up the law to devote himself entirely to portraiture.
Prinzhofer was one of the artists who led to the flowering of photolithography in Vienna from 1830 to 1860 - others included Joseph Kriehuber, Franz Eybl and Eduard Kaiser. His lithographs included more than 500 portraits. In the 1850s photography was becoming ever more widespread and in 1860 the photolithograph fell out of fashion, so in 1861 Prinzhofer moved to Graz and increasingly dedicated himself solely to oil-on-canvas portraits and watercolour miniatures.
