August Weckesser

August Weckesser (28 November 1821, in Winterthur – 11 January 1899, in Rome) was a Swiss painter, known primarily for history paintings.

Biography His father, Johann Christoph Adam Weckesser (1786–1834) was a miller, originally from Wertheim. His mother, Elisabeth Furrer (1799–1852), was the niece of Jonas Furrer, who would later become the Bundespräsident. While he was still a boy, the family moved to Oberwinterthur, where his father had taken over the operation of the local mill. At the age of fifteen, he left school to begin an apprenticeship there.

He apparently developed an interest in art because, at the age of nineteen, he began taking lessons from the portrait and history painter David Eduard Steiner.

In 1848, he returned to Winterthur and took lessons from Johann Caspar Weidenmann. Among his best known paintings are those depicting the death of Huldrych Zwingli, and begging Agnes of Austria to have mercy on her husband, who was implicated in an assassination plot. The latter may be seen at Schloss Kyburg.

After 1858, Italy served as his second home. He died there in 1899, after suffering from a kidney ailment. Shortly after, a major retrospective of his work was held at the .