Max Schödl

Max Schödl (2 February 1834 – 23 March 1921) was an Austrian painter known primarily for still life. After working early on as a portrait and genre painter, he turned in the 1870s to small-scale arrangements of decorative objects, especially porcelain, metalwork, textiles, arms, books, and antiques. His paintings are associated with East Asian decorative arts in late nineteenth-century Vienna.

He joined the Künstlerhaus in 1869 and remained connected to the institution for much of his career. Later accounts note that he was recognized there as both a benefactor and a founding member, and that from 1904 he also belonged to the Künstlerhaus Watercolorists’ Club.

Studio and collecting Schödl was also a collector, and his own studio appears to have supplied both subject matter and setting for a number of his paintings. The Wien Museum holds his Atelier des Stilllebenmalers Max Schödl (1897), a studio interior that reflects the dense accumulation of objects associated with his work. A separate auction catalogue entry for Schödl’s Mein Atelier likewise describes an interior crowded with antiques and porcelain and suggests that a self-portrait may be included within the composition.