Portrait of the engraver Franz Xaver Stber, head-and-shoulders

An etcher and an engraver by trade, Franz Xaver Stber was born in 1795 in Vienna, where he died in 1858. Stber began studying under his father Joseph and continued his training with Hubert Maurer at the Vienna Academy. In 1829 he invented and patented a method of colour printing on copper and steel plates. A member of the Academy from 1835, Stber taught copper engraving there from 1844.