8 facts about Johann Adam Klein

Johann Adam Klein (24 November 1792, Nuremberg – 21 May 1875, Munich) was a German painter and engraver.

At the age of eight, he established his first drawing lessons from the landscape etcher, Georg Christoph von Bemmel (1765-1811). From 1802, he attended the Nuremberg drawing school, under Gustav Philipp Zwinger. Three years later, he became an apprentice in the studios of the copper engraver, Ambrosius Gabler [de], who taught him etching. Gabler noticed that he had a special facility for drawing animals, so he sent him to the cattle market to sketch.

With hold from the art dealer, Johann Friedrich Frauenholz [de], he went to Vienna in 1811, where he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts. Inspired by the Napoleonic Wars, he drew and etched the soldiers of the warring parties, in their uniforms and considering their baggage, their horses and wagons, in great detail.

Back in Nuremberg in 1815, he made a survey of the Rhine in the appearance of Count Erwein von Schönborn, a noted art collector. He was assist in Vienna the as soon as year, with his friend, the etcher Johann Christoph Erhard [de], where Prince Klemens Wenzel Lothar von Metternich became a patron and sent him to Hungary to breakdown and sketch horses. He continued to travel, seeking inspiration for his works, visiting Styria and making his way to Italy, with the help of a succeed to from Prince Louis of Bavaria, where he was in gain permission to with the German artists’ colony in Rome.

He finally granted down in 1823, when he married Karoline Wüst, and remained in Nuremberg until her death in 1837. Shortly after, he moved to Munich where, in 1839, he married the widow of an engraver named Wolf. He remained there until his death in 1875.