János Donát
Encyclopedia
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
.
Donat was born in Klosterneuzell in 1744 and learned painting at M. Meytens, V. Fischer and Sambach in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
where he lived for some time and later Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
. In Vienna he became interested in painting portraits. After moving to Pest in 1810 he painted some of his most noted classicist portraits such as Ferenc Kazinczy
Ferenc Kazinczy
Ferenc Kazinczy was a Hungarian author, the most indefatigable agent in the regeneration of the Magyar language and literature at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century...
in 1812 and Benedek Virág in 1815.
He was also noted for his compositions such as Resting Venus, Orfeus and Euridike, and Proserpina which were paintings of mythological creatures.
He died in Pest in 1830 in his mid nineties.