Josef Stoitzner was an Austrian painter and printmaker best known for his landscapes of the European countryside. His unique style of painting combines hyperbolic colors with detail work, creating dramatic areas of space within the composition. For example, in Early Spring, the artist juxtaposed large fields of white with small areas of saturated color, in a style reminiscent of Japanese prints. Born in February, 1884 in Vienna, Austria, he studied at both the Vienna School of Applied Arts under Anton von Kenner and at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts under Franz Rumpler. In 1905, he began working as an art teacher at the Vienna Women’s Academy, before working as an inspector of drawing classes at art schools across Vienna. Stoitzner died on July 6, 1951 in Bramberg im Pinzgau, Austria. Today, Stoitzner’s works are held in the collections of the Museum Salzburg, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Wien Museum in Vienna, among others.