Franz Schrotzberg

Franz Schrotzberg (2 April 1811, Vienna – 29 May 1889, Graz) was an Austrian portrait painter.

At the age of nineteen, he became friends with the landscape painter Karl Marko, who had a significant influence on his artistic approach, although he would eventually turn to portrait painting.

In 1903 the art critic Ludwig Hevesi wrote that he was "silky smooth" (seidenglatte), as well as a mild (gelinder) Viennese version of Franz Xaver Winterhalter, and had the luck to make his career by painting a youthful Empress Elisabeth.

[1] In addition to painting, he taught at the Academy, where his students included the portrait painter Ernst Lafite [de], later said to be his "successor".

His paintings of the Habsburgs and other members of the nobility were often reproduced as lithographs by Josef Kriehuber, August Prinzhofer, Adolf Dauthage and Franz Eybl, among others.