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Karl Philippe Schallhas, who was born in Pozsony (Bratislava) but worked in Vienna all his life, was a charming although not widely known landscapist in the late l8th century. He studied at the Academy of Vienna under Johann Christian Brand. Those few known oil paintings which he left behind all testify to his talent, as, indeed, does the speed with which he rose in his career: he became a member of the Academy in 1790, and by 1795 he was an instructor at the School of Landscape Painting. One year before his death he was appointed assistant lecturer, first under his master and then under his master's brother. Although Schallhas learned to paint landscapes by following his master's example on the one hand, and by studying the classic traditions of Dutch painting on the other. His paintings, which give a slightly nostalgic rendering of nature, reveal the individual synthesis of all these influences. With their excellent perspectival view and staf^'ages, Schallhas's landscapes never represent an actual countryside; rather, like the present work, entitled L.andscape with River (1790-1795), they are projections of the Romantic ideal of nature - the painterly expressions of the harmonious relationship between man and nature, composed of meadows, brooks with bridges and rivers running through the forest.
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