Route à Pompei, Naples

Franz Richard Unterberger was born into an artistic family in Austria and received his training in Germany at the Munich Academy with Albert Zimmerman and Julius Lange, whom he followed to Milan for further instruction. Seminal to his education was his early tutelage under the Achenbach brothers (for an example of Oswald Achenbach's work, see lot 159), with whom he studied landscape at the famed Düsseldorf Academy, the pre-eminent school of landscape painting during the 19th Century. However, it was Unterberger's travels abroad which were to ultimately develop his artistic personality as well as define the direction of his artistic pursuits. While he traveled and exhibited extensively in Europe, Unterberger spent much of his time in Southern Italy and Sicily, painting the local inhabitants and the captivating landscape in which they lived.