Background
He was the son of Johann Baptist Georg Kilian Kupelwieser (1760–1813), co-owner of a factory that produced tableware.
He was the son of Johann Baptist Georg Kilian Kupelwieser (1760–1813), co-owner of a factory that produced tableware.
His talents were recognized at an early age by the sculptor Franz Anton von Zauner and by the time he was twelve, he was already attending the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. After the death of a Russian nobleman who had been his patron there, he returned to Vienna and earned his living primarily as an illustrator and portrait painter, although he is also known to have painted shop signs. In 1837, he became Professor of history painting at the Academy and, in 1850, was awarded the Knight"s Cross of the Order of Franz Joseph.
Virtually all of his later work involved religious altarpieces and frescoes.
At the age of sixty he fell ill, apparently due to the rigors of painting on wet lime, and never recovered his health. In 1894, a street was named in his honor and a commemorative stamp was issued in 1996.
He is a character in Das Dreimäderlhaus (House of the Three Girls, 1916), a pastiche operetta, derived from the music of Schubert by Heinrich Berté, based on the novel Schwammerl (Mushroom, one of Schubert"s nicknames) by Rudolf Hans Bartsch.
He was a member of the "Schubertianern" (friends of Franz Schubert), a group that often got together for summers at the Schloss Atzenbrugg, west of Vienna.