Carl Moll

Carl Julius Rudolf Moll (23 April 1861 – 13 April 1945) was a prominent art nouveau painter active in Vienna at the start of the 20th century. He was also the stepfather of Alma Mahler-Werfel.

Life and career

Moll was born in Vienna, Austria. He studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. He was a student of Christian Griepenkerl and of Emil Jakob Schindler (the father of Alma Mahler-Werfel née Schindler). After his teacher's death (1892), Moll married Schindler's widow, Anna (née von Bergen).

Moll was a founder-member of the Vienna Secession in 1897 and, in 1903 encouraged the use of the Belvedere Gallery to show exhibitions of modern Austrian art. In 1905 he, along with Gustav Klimt, left the Secession, although Moll continued to be involved with the exhibition of art in Vienna including the first exhibition in Vienna of the work of Vincent van Gogh (the second painting above the sideboard in his 1906 self-portrait is Van Gogh's Portrait of the Artist's Mother).

He committed suicide at the end of World War II, in Vienna.