Olga Wisinger-Florian (1844 – 1926) was an Austrian Impressionist painter. She mainly painted landscapes and floral still life. She was a representative of the Austrian Atmospheric Impressionism, a loose group of Austrian impressionist painters that was considered to be avant-garde in the 1870s and 1880s.
Wisinger-Florian was born on 1 November 1844 in Vienna, where she lived throughout her entire life. She started taking private art lessons at the age of 19. Frustrated with her progress and the quality of the instruction, she followed her parents' wishes and trained as a concert pianist with Julius Epstein. From 1868 to 1873, she had some success as a pianist, until an injury on her hand forced her to stop playing.
At the age of 30, Wisinger-Florian returned to painting, and wholly devoted herself to it. She was a disciple of Melchior Frisch and August Schaeffer and later of Emil Jakob Schindler, with whom she went on various study trips. When she was 35, she exhibited in an exhibition of the Viennese Art Association. She was one of only nine women who were asked to contribute to “Die Österreichisch-Ungarische Monarchie”, an encyclopedia, consisting of 24 pieces, on the lands and peoples of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Wisinger-Florian was the only Austrian female artist who participated.
From 1881 onwards, she regularly showed paintings at the annual exhibitions that took place at the artist's house and later often exhibited at exhibitions of the Vienna Secession. The work she showed at international exhibitions in Paris and Chicago earned her worldwide acclaim. The artist, who was also actively involved in the womens' movements of the middle-class at that time, was awarded numerous distinctions and prizes. Wisinger-Florian's early paintings can be assigned to what is known as Austrian Atmospheric Impressionism. In her landscape paintings, she adopted Schindler's sublime approach to nature. The motifs she employed, such as views of tree-lined avenues, gardens and fields, were strongly reminiscent of her teacher's work. From 1884 onwards, Schindler and Wisinger-Florian painted the countryside surrounding the Castle of Plankenberg (Lower Austria), where she came into close contact with Schindler's other disciples Tina Blau, Marie Egner and Carl Moll. After breaking with Schindler in 1884, the artist went her own way. Her conception of landscapes became more realistic. Her late work is notable for a lurid palette of colour with discernible overtones of expressionism. With landscape and floral pictures that were, by the 1890s, already expressionist regarding her palette of colour, she was years ahead of her time. She died in 1926, February 27, in Grafenegg (Lower Austria). Despite her late start as a painter, Wisinger-Florian enjoyed renown within the framework of the fin de siècle in Vienna.
