Portrait  of a girl wearing a scarf (probably member of the artist's family) was executed around 1830-1840 by important Austrian portrait and genre painter of Biedermeier epoch Johann Baptist Reiter (1813 Linz - 1890 Vienna).

Johann Baptist Reiter was the son of a master carpenter. He completed a three-year apprenticeship in his father's business in Linz, after which he created "life-size company signs based on copperplate engravings – as well as signs for grocers and merchants of cut goods."He likely received his initial training from the painter Franz Xaver Bobleter, who worked in Linz.

Encouraged by the art dealer Josef Hafner, Reiter went to Vienna with his friend Leopold Zinnögger, with whom he lived and studied at the Vienna Academy. Both initially attended the engraving school. Reiter's teachers, according to his own account, were Anton Petter, Joseph Redl, and Johann Nepomuk Ender.Leopold Kupelwieser also had a strong influence, supporting him and securing early portrait commissions for him. There is no evidence of his occasional activity as a porcelain painter.

Through Leopold Kupelwieser's mediation, Reiter was granted a scholarship from the Upper Austrian Estates between 1834 and 1837. From this time on, he also participated in exhibitions and won the Lampi Prize for model drawing in 1836. In 1839, he married Maria Anna Hofstötter from Linz. From around 1842, he enjoyed increasing success with his paintings and earned a good living. However, the fact that he ran a large house in Vienna with a four-horse carriage and a Moor as a servant is a legend. In 1848, he sympathized with the revolutionaries and painted portraits of himself and his wife as entrenchment workers. The couple later separated, and by 1853 at the latest, Reiter met the seamstress Anna Josefa Theresia Brayer, 23 years his junior, from Zruč in Bohemia, who became his favorite model and lover.[4]

He had a son, Moritz, with her in 1862 and a daughter, Alexandrine (Lexi), in 1864, but he was only able to marry Anna after the death of his first wife in 1866. Between 1850 and 1870, Reiter exhibited regularly at the Austrian Art Association. After his beloved daughter Lexi died of pneumonia in 1883, he almost completely abandoned painting.

Johann Baptist Reiter's artistic influences were primarily those of Johann Peter Krafft, Leopold Kupelwieser, and Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, with whom he increasingly competed in the 1840s.

After initially dabbling in altarpieces and religious history paintings, he turned to realistic portrait and genre painting. Studying the Dutch of the 17th century helped him develop a sophisticated technique. With his lifelike portraits and genre paintings depicting the lives of ordinary people and workers, Reiter finally found his ideal subject, which made him one of the most successful Biedermeier painters in Vienna. Highlights of his work include his lively depictions of children, as well as portraits of extraordinary women such as the writer and suffragette Louise Aston. Even in his later work, he adhered to a realism that occasionally approaches that of Gustave Courbet. This is especially true of his lost masterpiece, The Country Outing, in which he comes very close to the French—without any evidence of having been there. Among his later works, several soulful portraits, including that of the geologist Ami Boué and several self-portraits, have achieved national significance.

Exhibitions: comprehensive retrospectives to date took place at the Schlossmuseum Linz and the Nordico in Linz to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth; collections of the Upper Austrian State Museum and the Linz City Museums (Nordico and Lentos) contain around 170 works by the artist. The exhibitions, curated by Lothar Schultes, Elisabeth Nowak-Thaller, and Kathrin Hausberger, were supplemented by loans from the Belvedere, the Vienna Museum, the Leopold Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Budapest, and other private collections and galleries from Austria and abroad. The exhibition architect was Thomas Pauli.

Literature: Constantin von Wurzbach: Reiter, Johann Baptist. In: Biographical Lexicon of the Austrian Empire; Alice Strobl: Johann Baptist Reiter, Schroll, Wien/München 1963; Lothar Schultes: Images of Life. Johann Baptist Reiter and 19th-Century Realism, exhibition catalog, Linz and Grafenegg Castle,  1990; different artist lexicons.

Inscriptions: signed oblique lower left; on the back of the canvas - a collection wax seal with illegible monogram.

Technique: oil on canvas, original period gilt frame.

Measurements: unframed w 8 5/8" x h 10 3/4" (22,2 x 27,3 cm), framed 12 5/8" x 14 5/8" (32 x 37 cm).

Condition: good, no any inpaintings, professionally cleaned.