Franz Ludwig
Catel
(b Berlin, 22 Feb 1778; d Rome, 19 Dec
1856).
German painter. As a child, Catel helped carve
small wooden figures in the toyshop owned by his father.
With the encouragement of the printmaker Daniel
Chodowiecki, Catel enrolled at the Berlin Kunstakademie,
becoming a full member in 1806. In 1807, after already
making a name for himself as a watercolourist and book
illustrator, he began several years of study at the
Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where his main subject
was oil painting. In 1811 he moved to Italy, where he
stayed for the rest of his life. Initially he wavered
between Joseph Anton Koch’s classically heroic style of
landscape painting and the Romantic lyricism of the
Nazarenes. Eventually he found that he could best
exercise his technical ability, and most quickly achieve
fame and fortune, by producing Italian landscapes. He
specialized in Neapolitan scenes depicting festive folk
customs; and such paintings proved popular with the mass
of wealthy travellers who came to Italy after the
Napoleonic Wars.