Adolf Kaufmann

Austrian (1848-1916)

Adolf Kaufmann was born in Opava, Austrian Silesia (now Troppau in the Czech Republic) in 1848. He was initially self-taught but completed his studies with the painter, Emile van Marcke de Lummen, in Paris. During this period Kaufmann is recorded as traveling extensively throughout central Europe, Russia, Poland, the Netherlands, Turkey and the Levant. He visited, and studied for a while in Berlin, Dusseldorf and Munich before settling in Vienna, Austria, where, together with fellow painter Carl Freiherr van Merode, Kaufmann opened an atelier and school in 1900 to teach the art of painting to young ladies.  Kaufmann returned to Vienna where he was elected to membership in the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in 1908. During this period he exhibited his paintings at the Kunstlerhaus of Vienna, the Munich Glass Palace and in the semi-annual competitions at the Great Berlin Art Exhibitions.

From 1909 to 1914, Kaufmann traveled and painted in Holland, the South Tyrol, Northern Italy and in Norway where he developed a series of colorful, panoramic and atmospheric fjord and landscape paintings. On his return to Berlin, Kaufmann’s paintings were purchased by a number of important collectors including members of the Austrian Royal Family, the French Emperor Napoleon III, Russian Czar Nicholas II, and Queen Isabella II of Spain.

Kaufmann’s works are in the collections of the Silesian Museum in Opava, the Pera Museum in Istanbul and the Leopold Museum  in Vienna.