Leopold Kupelwieser

Leopold Kupelwieser (17 October 1796 – 17 November 1862) was an Austrian painter, often associated with the Nazarene movement.

Biography

Kupelwieser was born on 17 October 1796 in Markt Piesting. He was the son of Johann Baptist Georg Kilian Kupelwieser (1760–1813), co-owner of a factory that produced tableware. His talents were recognized at an early age by the sculptor Franz Anton von Zauner and by the time he was twelve, he was already attending the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

During a stay in Rome in 1824, he came under the influence of Friedrich Overbeck and the Nazarene movement.

His brother was the theatrical director Joseph Kupelwieser, who wrote the libretto for Franz Schubert's opera Fierrabras. With his brother, Joseph, he was a member of the "Schubertianer" (friends of Schubert), a group that often got together for summers at the Schloss Atzenbrugg, west of Vienna. In 1826, Leopold married Maria Johanna Evangelista Augustina Stephania Theodora Lutz, an occasion which was marked by Schubert's composition, the "Kupelwieser Waltz" (never written down, but passed along by the family and later transcribed by Richard Strauss).

In 1837, he became Professor of history painting at the Academy

Legacy In 1894, a street was named in his honor and a commemorative stamp was issued in 1996. He is a character in Das Dreimäderlhaus (House of the Three Girls, 1916), a pastiche operetta, derived from the music of Schubert by Heinrich Berté, based on the novel Schwammerl (Mushroom, one of Schubert's nicknames) by Rudolf Hans Bartsch. Kupelwieser is honoured in street names in his birthplace (Kupelwieserstraße in Markt Piesting), Kupelwiesergasse in Hietzing, Vienna and in the Austrian towns of Wiener Neustadt, St. Pölten and Atzenbrugg.

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