Franz Biberstein

(1850 – 1930)

Born in Solothurn, Switzerland in 1850, Franz Biberstein began his formal artistic training at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. After becoming dissatisfied with the traditional academic practices of painting from Greek and Roman sculpture, he quit the Academy and began to study at in Karlsruhe, Germany under Feodor Dietz, a German historical and battle painter.

In 1880, Biberstein began working at the German Panorama Co. in Frankfurt under Ludwig Braun and August Lohr, who took “The Battle of Sedan”, exhibited in 1883 in New Orleans and thus instrumental in the growing popularity of panoramas in America. In 1886, Biberstein came to live in Milwaukee, where he began working for Lohr & Heine and the Milwaukee Panorama Co. From 1889 to 1900, he went to San Francisco to work with Frederick Wilhelm Heine, George Peter, Franz Rohrbeck on the panorama, “Battle of Manila”.

Biberstein also worked as a scenery painter for the Stadt Theatre in New York City and was the guest of Sir Thomas Shaughnessy which allowed him to travel and paint the Canadian Rockies and Mt. Sir Donald in British Columbia.