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of Fine Arts (Akademie der Bildenden Kunste) in Vienna, where he was taught by the
authoritarian Professor Christian Griepenkerl and was presented with the "Hofpreis I. klas-
se" Award for his Samson and Delilah painting upon the completion of his studies. This
national award was actually a travelling scholarship which enabled him to go on a two-
year study tour (1884-86) to Venice, Florence, Rome, Paris, Munich, Tunis and Athens.
Having settled down in Vienna in 1886, already on 27 December 1888, Lebiedzki became
a member of the Association of Fine Artists of Vienna (Bund Bildender Kunstler) and his
works were regularly exhibited at the Kunstlerhaus Gallery. He primarily painted portraits
and historical paintings. In addition to his works for the Parliament Building in Vienna (he
finished the mosaic frieze in 1900 and decorated the central hall (peristyle) with his figural
frieze between 1907 and 1911), he created a large frieze in the stucco lustro technique on
the building of the University of Athens in 1889, based on sketches by Carl Rahl. He
produced drafts for a competition to design the furnishing for the Rudolfinum in Prague.
In 1895, he was commissioned by the German Society for Arts and Sciences to cooperate
in the furnishing of the spa in Karlovy Vary (Kaiserbad) in Bohemia (the Austro-Hunga-
rian Empire). In 1906, out of gratitude for the help provided by the mentioned Society in
his early career, he presented it with a number of his sketches and studies for the paintings
Idyll, In the Homily, and Pieta. In 1896, he created sketches for the decoration of the main
lobby of the Graz University. Furthermore, he may have decorated the Gossleth Palace in
Trieste/Trst and the Kottulinski Palace in Graz with wall paintings. In addition to these
monumental paintings and equipment, Lebiedzki also executed historical and genre pain-
tings which were shown at various international exhibitions. For example, he exhibited
his painting The Kiss at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. His painting In the Homily was
shown at the Third Art Exhibition in Vienna in early 1894, and he displayed his Idyll at the
Vienna Kunstlerhaus and in Dresden.8 Awarded several times for his achievements, he
received the Knight's Cross of the Order of Franz Joseph in 1902 for his mosaic frieze on
the Parliament Building, and was given the Order of the Redeemer for his frieze on the
Athens University Building. His sketches for the mosaic frieze in the Parliament Building
in Vienna won him a gold medal at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. He exhibited his
painting entitled The Judgement of Paris in Florence in 1906/07. Ilse Knoflacher found
the latter, along with the painting Idyll, in a catalogue for an auction in the Dorotheum,
where the painting entitled Allegorie der Ernte was also sold. Furthermore, Lebiedzki was
a portraitist; his portraits of G. von Breuning, Ludwig Arnsburg, Konrad Hallenstein, and
Ludwig Gabillan can be found at the Gallery of Honour of the Burgtheater in Vienna. He
also painted a now lost portrait of Eugen Felix for the Kunstlerhaus president's gallery.9
Less is known about his private life. He never married and he was Jewish, but later

regularly been used in subsequent Slovenian literature (Janko OROŻEN, Zgodovina Trbovelj, Hrastnika in Dola. 1, Od

pocetka do 1918, Trbovlje 1958, p. 536; Igor SAPAĆ, "Vila de Seppi," in Slavne vile na Slovenskem, ed. Damjan

PRELOVSEK, Praha 2013, p. 56.

8 Heinz SCHONY, "Lebiedzki Eduard," in Osterreichisches Biographisches Lexikon: 1815-1950, V, Wien 1972, p. 66.
Wladimir AICHELBURG, 150 Jahre Kunstlerhaus Wien 1861 - 2011, Wien 2011; KNOFLACHER, "Der Mosaikfries
von Eduard Lebiedzki," pp. 20, 22; Heinrich FUCHS, Die bsterreichischen Maler des 19. Jahrhunderts, 3, Wien 1974,
p. 16. At present, nothing is known about the painted decoration of the villa in Trieste; however, it was normal at that
time for painters from various lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to work in Trieste (Donata LEVI, "Instituzioni
culturali e politica artistica a Trieste nella seconda meta dell Ottocento. Kulturne ustanove in umetnostna politika v Trstu
v drugi polovici 19. stoletja," in Trst: umetnostni izraz ob nacionalnem vprasanju. Trieste: 1'espressione artistica e la
questione nazionale, ed. Aleksander BAJC, Trieste 2014, pp. 221-260.

9 KNOFLACHER, "Der Mosaikfries von Eduard Lebiedzki", p. 24.