(b Obergaden, Styria, 24 Sept 1792; d Graz, 10 Oct 1877). Austrian painter, draughtsman and teacher. From 1810 to 1817 he studied portrait painting at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna and later travelled in Styria and Carinthia and to Trieste. Inspired by such artists as Joseph von Führich, Leopold Kuppelwieser and Wilhelm August Rieder (1796–1880), he became interested in medieval art and worked in Vienna both as a portrait painter and as a copyist of religious subjects in the museums. In 1821 he married Josephine Pichler, who died the following year. Tunner’s painting (Graz, Neue Gal.) of her with her two sisters is in the tradition of a Nazarene family portrait with Biedermeier overtones. In 1823 he moved to Rome, where he was accepted into the circle of the Nazarenes and where, under their influence, he began the most productive part of his career. Two years later he took charge of organizing their communal composition exercises in which they painted mainly biblical and legendary themes, and he himself made copies (Graz, Neue Gal.) after prints by Dürer and paintings by Fra Angelico, Perugino and Raphael. He was a close friend of Eduard Jakob von Steinle, and they worked together on the frescoes of The Visitation and The Annunciation in Trinità dei Monti, Tunner doing the sketches and Steinle the paintings. He also produced landscape drawings (Graz, Neue Gal.) that are full of atmosphere and that convey his experience of nature surely and spontaneously while at the same time expressing religious spirituality. He won the competition for a painting of The Crucifixion (1836–8) for the altar of the Cross in S Antonio Nuovo, Trieste (drawings, Graz, Neue Gal.) and for this was accepted, along with Ingres, into the Congregazione dei virtuosi al Pantheon. Henceforth, he decided to put his art at the service of the Catholic Church and to do no further paintings or drawings of nude figures. In 1840 he was appointed Director of the Steinisch-Ständische Zeichnungsakademie in Graz, where he methodically taught the principles of Nazarene art to aspiring students. He painted portraits of the local aristocracy and received commissions for numerous altarpieces, an important example being that of the Family of Mathias Constantin Graf von Wickenburg (1844) for the altar of the Kirche des Kurorts, Bad Gleichenberg. This was rendered in the manner of a Venetian sacra conversazione, with the donor’s family expressing adoration. In 1870 he was dismissed from the directorship because of strong criticism of his dogmatic teaching methods; he had closed his mind to all contemporary naturalistic trends and had totally rejected landscape as a genre.

• Tunner, Josef (Ernst)
  • Steinle, Eduard Jakob von