Galerie Paul Prouté

Born in 1689 in Prague to a family of Bavarian immigrants involved in construction and the art trade, Wenzel Lorenz Reiner grew up in an environment closely tied to the arts. As the grandson of a contractor and the son of a sculptor, he became familiar with artisanal practices and the art market at a very early age; an uncle, a prosperous art dealer, is also said to have influenced his career path. Amid the intense artistic ferment that characterized Bohemia at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, he was profoundly influenced by the leading Prague painters of his time, notably Jan Kryštof Liška (c. 1650–1712) and Petr Brandl (1668–1735). From the former, he likely adopted the fresco technique; from the latter, the expressive power and dramatic sensibility, which he applied to monumental painting and landscape.