Johann Baptist Reiter

Johann Baptist Reiter (Linz, 1813 – Vienna, 1890) was an Austrian portrait and genre painter associated with the Biedermeier period. The son of a master carpenter, he first painted furniture, signs and crosses in his father's workshop before enrolling at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where his teachers included Leopold Kupelwieser and Thomas Ender.

For much of his early career he earned his living as a porcelain painter. Probably on Kupelwieser's recommendation, he received a scholarship from the Upper Austrian Landstand that allowed him to continue his studies from 1834 to 1837. During this period he also exhibited and won the Lampi Prize for model drawing in 1836. He began with genre and historical scenes but turned to portraiture, which brought him such popularity that he could buy a large house in Vienna.

During the Revolution of 1848 he sided with the revolutionaries, which possibly caused him trouble; his wife left him in 1850. From then until 1870 he regularly showed at the exhibitions of many Austrian art societies. He remarried in 1866, and his new wife's extravagance forced him to accept more commissions than he could manage and to make copies of Old Masters. He died in 1890 and was buried in the Zentralfriedhof.

In 2013 a major retrospective, jointly hosted by the Schlossmuseum Linz and the Nordico Stadtmuseum, brought together more than 170 works from museums in Vienna and Budapest and private collections, renewing public interest in his work.