Antonín Machek

His father also worked as a tailor and, during the summers, was engaged as a musician at the nearby residence of Bishop Jan Leopold Hay, but died in 1785, when Antonín was ten.

[1] His mother was too ill to care for him, so the local canon presented him to Bishop Hay, who took him in and apprenticed him to the court painter Wenzel Zitta (?-?

The Bishop died shortly after Bluma, so he became a journeyman attached to the fresco painter and decorator Antonín Tuvora (1747-1807) and spent his evenings studying drawing with Ludvík Kohl.

A year later, he decided to be an itinerant artist, travelling through northern Austria and setting up portrait shops in Linz and Steyr.

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.