Johann Baptist Isenring (1796 - 1860)

Johann Baptist Isenring

Johann Baptist Isenring was a Swiss landscape painter and printmaker, one of the first photographers in 19th-century Switzerland.

Johann studied painting and aquatint at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, opened an art studio in St. Gallen in 1828 and soon began publishing his lithographic collection of picturesque views of Switzerland's most remarkable cities and towns.

In 1839, Isenring, fascinated by the discoveries of Niépce and Daguerre, bought equipment for "daguerreotype" and a year later organized an exhibition in his studio in Multtertor, which was probably the first photographic exhibition in the world. Isenring even gave up painting for a while and worked as a photographer for two years, settling in Munich. He made portraits, photographs of architecture, reproductions of paintings and developed a coloring method for his prints, which he patented in America.