Peter Fendi

Peter Fendi (4 September 1796 – 28 August 1842) was an Austrian court painter, portrait and genre painter, engraver, and lithographer. He was one of the leading artists of the Biedermeier period.

Peter Fendi was born in Vienna on 4 September, 1796, to Joseph and Elizabeth Fendi. His father was a schoolmaster. He fell from a changing table as an infant, an accident which caused irreparable damage to his spine. Fendi demonstrated a talent for drawing from childhood. He was admitted to the St. Anna's Academy of Fine Art in 1810 at the age of thirteen, where he studied for three years under Johann Martin Fischer, Hubert Maurer and Johann Baptist von Lampi the Elder.

Fendi met Joseph Barth, an art collector and the personal ophthalmologist of Joseph II, and through Barth's connections to other influential artists, in 1818 Fendi found a job at the Imperial Gallery of Coins and Antiquities, where he worked as a draughtsman and engraver. Fendi received a gold medal in 1821 for his oil painting Vilenica, and was elected a member of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 1836.