Franz Bischoff

Franz Bischoff came to landscape painting through porcelain. Trained in Austria in decorative painting, he emigrated to America in 1885 and built a reputation painting roses onto china, good enough that he was called the King of the Rose Painters. He ran kilns, taught decorating, and produced his own colours.

The move to California in 1906 changed the work. He built a studio on the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena and turned to oil, painting the coast at Monterey, the Sierra, and the canyons near his home. The decorative training never quite left him. The colour is higher keyed than most of his plein air contemporaries and the paint is laid on thickly.

His flower pieces continued alongside the landscapes and are usually the stronger work, which is unsurprising given how long he had spent looking at petals. He remains grouped with the California Impressionists, though his palette sits apart from theirs.