(b Karlovac, 19 May 1821; d 5 July 1858). Croatian painter. He was apprenticed to the furniture trade, which he soon abandoned to join the workshop of the painter F. Hamerlitz. Apart from learning his craft, he was employed painting houses and churches. His first patron, Colonel Franjo Kos von Kossen, along with other Karlovac notables, raised enough money to send him on a scholarship to Italy. In 1838 he arrived in Florence, where he was first taught by A. Corsi and subsequently by G. Meli. He became associated with the painter Francesco Salghetti-Drioli and copied Old Masters such as Fra Angelico and Ghirlandaio. In 1841 he left Florence and travelled to Rome via Siena. In Rome he fell under the influence of the NAZARENES and in particular of their ideological leader, Friedrich Overbeck, as can be seen in his Moses at the Riverbank (Karlovac, City Mus.) and other religious paintings of that period. After a short visit home Karas returned to Rome in 1844 and began to paint genre subjects (e.g. Girl with a Lute, c. 1844; Zagreb, Gal. Mod. A.). In 1847, his funds exhausted, he left Rome for Trieste, where he painted portraits of the bourgeoisie, returning to Karlovac in 1848. The following year he taught in the School of Drawing in Zagreb. In 1851 he travelled to Bosnia, where he was commissioned to paint the portrait of Omer Pasha Latas (c. 1851; ex-Omer Pasha Latas, priv. col., Travnik), after which he returned to Karlovac, again earning an income from portraiture. His best-known and most successful work dates from this period (e.g. portraits of Anna and Misko Kresic and Alois Duquenois, and The Boy; all Zagreb, Gal. Mod. A.). He was one of the best representatives of the rising, independent development of 19th-century Croatian painting, but under the absolutist and anti-Slavonic rule of the Viennese Court, Karas lacked support and understanding. He drowned himself in the River Korana near Karlovac.

• Karas, Vjekoslav
  • Croatia, §III, 2: Painting, graphic arts and sculpture, 1800 and after
  • Zagreb