MEYER, FELIX, a landscape painter, was born in 1653 at Winterthur, canton of Zürich, Switzerland. After receiving lessons in his art from a painter at Nuremberg, he studied under Ermels, whose style he adopted. He then visited Italy for a short time, but finding that the climate did not agree with his health, he returned to Switzerland, and found free scope for the exercise of his genius in depicting the sublime scenery of his native country. He was remarkable for the ease and rapidity with which he executed his designs; and these qualities on one occasion were the means of extending his fame beyond the limits of his own country. Having arrived in the course of his travels at the Abbey of St Florian in Austria, he was requested by the abbot to give his advice about two large rooms which he wished to have painted in fresco; a work which the artist he had employed seemed unable to perform. Meyer immediately began to describe the designs he would recommend; and as he went on, with a piece of charcoal in his hand, rapidly sketching the various objects of the landscape, he excited the admiration of the abbot to such a degree that he engaged him to paint the whole. Although the landscapes of this artist are deservedly famous, he was not so successful in painting figures; and in some of his pictures those parts have been
done by Melchior, Roos, and Philip Rugendas. Meyer died in 1713.