RAHL, ral, Karl, Austrian painter: b. Vienna, 13 Aug. 1812; d. there, 9 July 1865. At 19 he won a prize at the Vienna' Academy and then started on his first tour among the art centres of Germany, Hinisiari Graf:14W: Me made his home in the last-ntimed country front 1836 to 1843, studying especially the the Venetian and Roman school, from derived the grandeur of conception and noble coloring for which his works are •distinguished. In 1846, after two• years' residence as a portrait' painter in Vienna, be resumed his travels'and. practised his art'with success and profit in'Hol-' stein, Paris, Rome, Copenhagen and Munich. Among his historical 'paintings of this first period are 'The Finding of Manfred's Body> ;. (Manfred's Entrance•into Lucera); Cata combs during the Persecution); .(in the Ham burg gallery and a replica in the Berlin National Gallery). He was appqinted,profeasor the Berlin Art Academy in 1850, •kits" his political opinions' were extretn••arid Violent-tied he Was compelled to leave the city: Tbeatfivatn acbool which he thereupon opened became the 'Most, important seminary of painting in meanwhile applied himself to much decorative work, as is testified by the painted façade and vestibule of the church in the Old Mea•Market at Vienna, the four compositions from the Greek heroic age, and the 'Four Elements' in the palace of Baron Sina. In 1864 he painted in
the Museum of Arms a series of allegorical figures of heroic size. To this period belong his fresco, 'A Maid from Foreign Lands' ; and the designs for a ballroom in Oldenburg Castle and 'Incidents of the Argonautic Expedition.> His last works of designs for the decoration of the New Opera House at Vienna. These were executed by his pupils after his death. He unites in his pictures the rich color ing of Rubens and Titian with a harmony of grouping monumental in its impressiveness. Yet his handling of form inclines to coarseness and exaggeration. Among the most eminent of his pupils were Bitterlich, Eisentnenger, Lotz, Gnepenkert, Gaul and Than. Consult George Mayer, (Erinnerung von Karl Rahl' (1882).