Alexander Kircher

Alexander Kircher
Alexander Kircher in his library room, after 1935
Born	February 26, 1867 Trieste, Austro-Hungarian Empire
Died	September 16, 1939(1939-09-16) (aged 72) Berlin, Germany
Nationality	Austrian/German
Known for	Marine and landscape paintings, drawings and illustrations
Movement	1904 from Trieste to Dresden (Saxony), Germany
Awards	Spanish Order of Isabella the Catholic
Patron(s)	Emperor Franz Joseph I and Emperor Wilhelm II

Alexander Kircher (26 February 1867 – 16 September 1939) was an Austrian-German marine- and landscape painter and an illustrator. Many of his paintings are exhibited in museums in Germany, Austria, Croatia and Slovenia or are privately owned in those countries. But there are also some of his paintings in the United States of America, Great Britain, Scandinavia and Greece. The paintings of Kircher are offered at leading auction houses such as Christie's and Bonhams London, Sotheby's New York, Burchard Galleries St.Petersburg Florida, Stahl Hamburg, Van Ham Cologne, the Dorotheum in Vienna and several others. The majority of his paintings the artist signed with Alex Kircher, where he sometimes wrote the year of the creation of the image below. But in his paintings, you will also find the signatures as shown here by the auction house to German Bergmann auction.

Kircher was born in Trieste, which belonged at that time to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Habsburg Monarchy). As a young man he intended to choose the profession of a naval officer in the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Because of a foot injury his application was rejected. In 1888 he opted for studying painting at the Berlin Academy, where he concentrated mainly on marine painting from the start. His teachers were Hans Gude and Hermann Eschke.

Kircher made numerous study trips throughout Europa, Asia, North America and Egypt. During these travels, he made several important paintings, drawings and illustrations. In 1893 he worked on the picturesque decoration of buildings at the World Exhibition in Chicago as well as panoramas and dioramas of the marine painter . In addition, Kircher worked as an illustrator for popular German and foreign magazines and publishers of which only a few can be mentioned: The Leipziger Illustrierte Zeitung or the modern illustrated weekly Reclams universe (Leipzig), the writings of the Austrian (Vienna) and the German fleet association (Berlin) and the Viennese publisher Philipp & Kramer, for which he designed the postcard series "Dalmatia and Istria". These include Feldpost, postcards which Kircher created for the Austrian Red Cross, the War Welfare Office or the War Aid Office and also for the London Postcard Publisher Raphael Tuck & Sons and the Swedish Postcards Publisher: "Gothenburg Lithographic AB and Meyer & Köster" etc. For some time Kircher owned a steam yacht, which he named Romana – this was his wife's name. With this ship he could better motives collect and draw maritime objects from the area. This he did for example in fleet parades.