Ernst Graner (Austrian painter) 1865 - 1943
Ernst Graner came to Vienna as a child and attended elementary school in Hietzing. After training as a goldsmith and lithographer as well as two years of drawing lessons with Josef Grandauer, the young man attended the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts from 1885 to 1890. Here he was a student in the landscape painting class with Eduard von Lichtenfels. After completing his studies, the young artist devoted himself to genre and landscape painting and from 1890 exhibited his works at exhibitions in Vienna. In addition to landscape painting, Graner developed a great talent for architecture and vedute painting. His most important works include depictions of streets and squares in Vienna. His numerous watercolors show historically important sites and views, such as the rotunda in the Vienna Prater destroyed in 1937, the Philipphof destroyed in 1945 or the Vienna City Theater, but also the Hofburg or Schönbrunn Palace with trips by Emperor Franz Joseph. From 1910 Graner was a member of the Vienna Fine Arts Cooperative, at whose exhibitions he was represented before the turn of the century. He is considered one of the most important Viennese watercolorists of his time. His works are also exhibited in the Wien Museum. The visual artist died in Vienna in November 1943. Obituaries as well as short notes on his 75th birthday in 1940 in the newspapers controlled by the regime show him sympathy for his art style, which is reminiscent of Rudolf von Alt, but do not indicate any particular closeness of Graner to National Socialism. In 1961 the Granergasse in Vienna-Inzersdorf was named after him.
