Austrian painter, teacher and curator of German birth. From the age of ten, Krafft studied at the Hanau Akademie while at the same time continuing his school education in Hanau. In 1799 he went to Vienna with his sister and studied at the Akademie for three years with the history and portrait painter (and director of the academy) Heinrich Friedrich Füger. At this time Krafft painted mythological subjects, made copies from older works and produced several self-portraits that already reveal his capacities in this genre. From 1802 to 1804 he was in Paris, where he studied with Jacques-Louis David and François Gérard. The work of these two, together with that of Jean-Baptiste Greuze and Antoine-Jean Gros, was to influence Krafft´s later work when he returned to Vienna. David´s realist tendencies in painting had a fundamental effect on Krafft´s artistic output, and it was through Krafft that this realism contributed to a development towards Biedermeier art in Vienna.In 1808 Krafft went on a study trip to Rome; on his return to Vienna he produced numerous portraits, a genre that occupied him for the rest of his career, allowing him to make a handsome living. His portraits are characterized by the emphasis he placed on specific traits of the face of the sitter, by an economy of outline and by the cool, often sharply graduated colouring. The composition is usually either modern , in the sense that David s portraits are modern (the subject facing the observer and the background unobtrusive), or it tends more towards a Baroque presentation of the subject. In 1823 Krafft became corrector and extraordinary professor for history painting at the Vienna Academy, in 1828 he finally was nominated director of the imperial collection of paintings in Belvedere castle in Vienna. Johann Peter Krafft was leading classicist history- and portraitpainter in Vienna and had also influence on the developement of genrepainting in Vienna Biedermeier.