Portrait of a young lady with a wreath of flowers in her hair was executed by famous Austrian-Czech historicist and portrait painter Josef Jakob Reiner (1863 Steindorf on Ossiach Lake, Carinthia - 1931 Aussig an der Elbe (Ústí nad Labem)

Czechoslovakia). He was an important landscape painter and portrait painter and is often viewed as a worthy successor to Ernst Gustav Doerell.
Josef Reiner initially started out as a decorative painter and worked as a journeyman in Munich and Stuttgart. He then returned to Carinthia and initially studied at the commercial school in Klagenfurt. His further professional training took place at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and at the company Adolf Falkenstein – Wiener k.k. Court decorative painter, gilder and house painter.

In 1895 he moved to Aussig an der Elbe, where he spent most of his life and work. Two years later he married Antonia Patzelt here. Reiner was a sought-after painter and designer in Aussig and received numerous lucrative commissions, including for the design of villas and representative rooms of industrial companies. He was also the first teacher for the Aussig painter Fritz Gärtner (1882–1958).

As early as 1895 he was involved in designing the interior of the villa of the mining entrepreneur Eduard Jacob Weinmann (1852–1928) on Baumgartenstrasse, today Winstona Churchilla 1512/8a. Weinmann had recommended him to the chemist Max Schaffner (1830–1907), the then director of the Austrian Association for Chemical and Metallurgical Production in Aussig.

After returning to Aussig, he received many commissions for portraits of Aussig citizens and allegorical paintings for various Aussig associations. As an honorary member of the Schockenstein Association, he painted, among other things: 24 shooting targets with various motifs, including the death of a dragoon from 1813.

Josef Reiner also painted the ceiling paintings in the Villa Kříž in Saaz (now part of the Regional Museum of the City of Žatec), among others. the ceiling painting The Procession of Aurora in the Great Hall of the villa based on the ceiling fresco by Guido Reni in the Palazzo Pallavicini Rospigliosi in Rome. His large-format landscape paintings depicting Schockenstein Castle, which are still kept in the city museum today, are of high documentary value.

Josef Reiner was a member of the Metznerbund, which organized an exhibition in the city library in Aussig in 1927 that was dedicated to Reiner's life's work. Josef Reiner died on August 23, 1931 in Aussig.

Literature: Prof.H.Fuchs, Lexicon of Austrian artists, Vienna, 1975; ThB XXVIII, 1934, 119 .

Inscription: signed and dated 1894 upper right.

Technique:  oil on wood, Original period gold-plated frame.

Measurements: unframed w 15 1/2 " x h 10 1/4" (39,5 x 26 cm), framed w 26" x h 20 1/4" (65 x 51,5 cm)

Condition: in very good condition.