Josefine Swoboda (29 January 1861 in Vienna – 27 October 1924 in Vienna) was an Austrian portrait painter. She was one of the most active Vienna portraitists.
Life
Josefine Swoboda came from a Vienna family of artists, she was the daughter of the portrait painter Eduard Swoboda (1814-1902) and his second wife Josefine (née Müller; 1839-1906), and sister of the painter Rudolf Swoboda the younger (1859-1914). Her uncles were the landscape and animal painter Rudolf Swoboda (1819-1859) and the orientalist Leopold Carl Müller (1834-1892). After her first painting lessons with her father she studied from 1878 to 1886 as a listener at the k.k. Kunstgewerbeschule which was closely associated with the Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie (Imperial Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry), among others under Ferdinand Laufberger and Julius Victor Berger.
Constantin von Wurzbach wrote in his Biographical Encyclopedia of the Empire of Austria in 1880 about her: "Her excellent work find rapid sale and the only 19-year-old artist entitled to the most beautiful hopes."
