Antonín Machek
Antonín Machek (31 October 1775,
Biography
He was born into a family of tenant farmers. His father also worked as a tailor and, during the summers, was engaged as a musician at the nearby residence of Bishop
His mother was too ill to care for him, so the local
When his mother died in 1798, he sold the family home, moved to Vienna and enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts. He ran out of money in 1801 and returned to Bohemia, settling in Hradec Králové and working as a portrait painter. A year later, he decided to be an itinerant artist, travelling through northern Austria and setting up portrait shops in Linz and Steyr.[2] In 1813, he came to a stop in Prague, where he got married and became involved in Czech patriotic circles. He also maintained connections with the Academy of Fine Arts there, especially with Professors František Tkadlík and Joseph Bergler, who taught him lithography and other graphic techniques.[1] In 1835, he was one of those who formally protested the overwhelmingly German content of courses at the Academy and the alleged incompetence of its Director.[3] In all, he created over 300 portraits, many of which were made into lithographs by his student, František Šír (1804-1864).
References
- ^ a b c d Rudolf Müller (1884), "Machek, Anton", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 20, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 5–7
- ^ a b Kratinová: "Machek Antonín". In: Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Vol. 5, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1972, p. 393.
- ^ Brief biography Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine @ the Galerie Výtvarného Umění v Ostravĕ.
Further reading
- Luděk Novák, Antonín Machek. Praha Nakladatelství ČSAV, 1962.
- Karel Boromejsky Madl, Antonin Machek, malíř podobizen (portrait painter), Stenc, 1929
External links
- ArtNet: More works by Machek
- "Antonín Machek: Podobizna sochaře Josefa Malinského" (Portrait of the sculptor Josef Malínský) A video from Česká televize
- Česká pošta [1] Commemorative stamp, 1995, 14Kč