200th birthday - Austria / II. Republic of Austria 1996 - 6 Shilling

Peter Fendi, the great watercolorist of Viennese Biedermeier, was born on 4 September 1796 in Vienna, the son of the schoolmaster Joseph Fendi and his wife Elisabeth. Even as a child, he proved an impressive talent for drawing. So he entered the art academy of St. Anna as a thirteen-year-old, where he was to stay for three years. Decisive for Fendi's career was the encounter with Joseph Barth, the ophthalmologist Joseph II, who was an enthusiastic art collector. Through connections to other influential contemporaries was Fendi Zeichner at k. k. Coin and Antiquities Cabinet of the Imperial Art Collections. The artist dealt mainly with prints, etchings, lithographs and wood engravings. In lithography, his experiments in multicolored printing are regarded as pioneering achievements. Since the sense of art was part of the feeling of life in Biedermeier, he was used in drawing and painting in aristocratic houses and town houses. By choosing his idyllic family motifs, Peter Fendi became the founder of genre painting, the image of manners in Viennese Biedermeier painting. Fendi died on August 28, 1842. His works are today in the Graphic Art Collection Albertina Vienna, in the Austrian Gallery in the Belvedere, in the Historical Museum of the City of Vienna and in the collections of Prince Liechtenstein in Vaduz.