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Postl, Karel
(b Bechyne, 1767; d Prague, 15 March 1818). Bohemian painter. He studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna, probably under Friedrich August Brand (1735–1806) or in the printmaking class with Jakob Matthias Schmutzer (1733–1811). Postl’s oeuvre consists largely of small-scale landscapes. He drew from the experience of Viennese vistas (e.g. Panorama of Vienna, 1804), but in the spirit of Dutch landscape painting he combined landscapes with genre scenes (e.g. the sepia drawing Tea on the Stvanice, 1805). Soon after becoming professor of landscape painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (1806) he began to paint heroic, idealized landscapes (e.g. Rocky Landscape in a Storm, after 1806). He was influenced by Claude Lorrain and further developed bucolic scenes in Bohemian settings, such as View of the Great Mountains (1810). In 1808–10 he worked on a series of views of the surroundings of the North Bohemian spa of Teplice and the West Bohemian spa of Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad), etched by Antonín Pucherna (1776–1852). His last paintings, views of the Clamgallas castles, were completed by his pupil Antonín Mánes. With his pre-Romantic concepts, coupled with the precepts of Dutch landscape painting, Postl promoted a new conception of landscape painting; in opposition to vedute and decorative landscapes, he paved the way to more expansive themes.
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