John Alexander Kirsch could sit so quietly at his easel that birds would land on him.
Chipmunks wandered into his studio. A wasp could land on him, and he would let it be rather than swat it away.
His grandsons, Tom Kirsch of Wisconsin and John Kirsch of Estes Park, remember him as an extraordinarily gentle man who had experienced the brutality of war but wanted nothing to do with guns. Above all, they remember him as an artist.
John, who owns a local house painting company, remembers sitting on his grandfather’s lap as a boy while Kirsch put a paintbrush in his small hand and encouraged him to paint.
Those memories survive alongside something much larger: There are hundreds of paintings still stored at the family’s summer cabin off High Drive in Estes Park.
Together, they represent a somewhat forgotten chapter in the artistic history of Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park — the life’s work of an Austrian immigrant who spent more than 30 years painting Longs Peak, Hallett Peak, mountain lakes, rivers, and valleys.
Kirsch didn’t simply observe the mountains from afar. He walked into them. With a knapsack and painting supplies on his back, he hiked into Rocky Mountain National Park and painted what he saw.
Other days, he simply set up his easel outside the family’s cabin on Tanager Road and painted the mountains from his front yard, usually with a cigarette in hand.
Longs Peak was one of his favorite subjects, but his story began thousands of miles from Colorado.
An artist from childhood
Kirsch was born Johan Alexander Kirsch on Oct. 9, 1894, into a family of artisans and craftsmen in Neukirchen an der Vöckla in Upper Austria, the son of Josef Kirsch and Maria Divosevic.
His father decorated church interiors, and Kirsch began learning art as a child. By about age 12, he had completed an apprenticeship with a local art guild.
His talent opened doors. Kirsch studied in Austria and Munich with the support of government scholarships and received the rigorous classical training that would remain evident throughout his career.
He became skilled in murals, frescoes, decorative painting, and stained glass — abilities that would eventually take his work into hundreds of American churches.
But his career as an artist was interrupted by war in Europe.
A prisoner with a paintbrush
Kirsch was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian military during World War I. The experience left permanent marks.
According to family accounts, Kirsch suffered the effects of mustard gas, lost hearing in one ear from artillery fire, and carried a scar on his hand from a bayonet wound. He was also captured by Russian forces.
Family stories tell of Kirsch being put to work in a coal mine while a prisoner. He continued to draw despite his circumstances, using charcoal to draw on the walls where he was confined. A guard discovered the drawings and was furious, but a superior officer recognized Kirsch’s talent.
Kirsch was taken out of prison labor and assigned to teach art to members of Russian nobility. Family tradition holds that his students included children of the czar.
Kirsch eventually escaped. His grandsons recount a harrowing family story in which he and another prisoner attempted to flee together. Kirsch made it. His companion was killed by machine-gun fire.
Frances and a new life
Back in Austria, Kirsch met Franciska Freud, who went by Frances or “Fanny.” They married July 13, 1921, and the following year left Austria for the United States.
Sponsored by Conrad Schmitt Studios, a Wisconsin company specializing in church decoration and stained glass, John and Frances sailed from Antwerp, Belgium, aboard the SS Finland and arrived in New York on March 14, 1922.
The couple traveled first to Wisconsin, then lived for a time in Kansas City, Mo., and eventually settled in Wisconsin, where they raised two children, John Jr. and Martha. Kirsch became a naturalized U.S. citizen Dec. 15, 1931.
Working for Conrad Schmitt Studios continued the artistic tradition in which Kirsch had grown up. His father had decorated churches in Austria. Now, as an immigrant artist, he would decorate them in America.
Kirsch built his American career creating religious art, including murals, stained-glass windows, altars, and elaborate interior decorations. By his own estimate, his work could be found in about 400 churches in at least 15 states.
Church art was his profession. Landscape painting was something more personal.
Eventually, the Rocky Mountains gave him a place where that part of his artistic life could flourish.
Finding the Rocky Mountains
In the 1940s, John and Frances traveled west to Colorado. For an artist raised in the Alps, the Rockies must have seemed both new and familiar.
Kirsch had already painted some of Europe’s most celebrated peaks, including the Eiger and Matterhorn. His European landscapes demonstrated his fascination with high mountains illuminated by bright sunlight and alpine glow. Colorado gave him an entirely new world of mountains to explore and paint.
In 1944, the Kirsches bought a cabin off High Drive in Estes Park that had belonged to C. Wesley and Elsie Boag. It was a summer place, not a year-round residence. For the next 32 years, the family would live there from June until mid-September before returning to Wisconsin. For Kirsch, the cabin was also a studio, gallery, and gateway into Rocky Mountain National Park.
Painting the high country
Kirsch loved to paint on location. Today, the practice would be described as plein-air painting, but for Kirsch it was simply part of being an artist. He put his materials in a pack and walked.
With Frances accompanying him on many treks, he explored the park, searching for compositions and studying the landscape.
These were not imagined mountains or generic Western scenes. Kirsch walked the trails, stood beside the lakes, and studied the peaks under changing skies.
Sometimes the subject was simply in his front yard, which offered expansive views, allowing Kirsch to carry his easel outside and paint.
Kirsch painted on canvas but also experimented with aluminum and copper panels. Light striking the metal could intensify the colors and create a luminous quality reminiscent of gold leaf.
In addition to oil, Kirsch worked in watercolor, acrylic, and fresco. He understood the density and transparency of pigments and adapted those qualities to canvas, paper, metal, and other surfaces. He also produced screen prints with intricate detail.
Light became one of the defining elements of Kirsch’s landscapes. So did the sky — clouds, sunlight, and atmospheric effects gave scale and movement to the mountains beneath them.
His paintings of the Eiger and Matterhorn demonstrated his ability to capture high peaks in European light. His paintings of Longs Peak and the area surrounding Estes Park showed something more intimate. These were sweeping, romantic paintings.
The man behind the paintings
Trained in the classical European tradition, Kirsch valued technical skill, drawing, composition, and recognizable subjects. He had little use for modern art.
In one interview, Kirsch dismissed modern art as “meaningless dabs” that abused the sincerity of human expression.
His career stood at the opposite end of that artistic spectrum. Kirsch could design a stained-glass window, paint a monumental church mural, execute a fresco, and then hike into the mountains with an easel to paint a landscape from life.
His grandsons’ memories reveal another side of Kirsch: an animal whisperer and a gentle grandfather who liked to paint. And they remember their grandmother as an excellent cook whose kitchen reflected the family’s European heritage.
Together, John and Frances made the rustic cabin that looked like it belonged in the Swiss Alps a summer family home. On July 13, 1971, the Kirschs celebrated their golden wedding anniversary there, surrounded by their son, daughter, and six of their eight grandchildren.
Six years later, Kirsch died on Aug. 16, 1977, in Elm Grove, Wis. He was 82. Frances died on March 21, 1979, in Waukesha. The family said she died of a broken heart.
Nearly half a century later, Kirsch’s artistic legacy can be seen across the country, much of it in churches where generations of worshippers have seen his work, perhaps without knowing the story of the immigrant artist who made it.
Kirsch paintings available at CABINtique in Estes Park
The Kirsch family sells John Kirsch’s paintings at CABINtique, 521A S St Vrain Ave. The shop, owned by Carey Stevanus, specializes in curated vintage cabin and camp antiques and home décor. This week, Tom Kirsh brought in more than a dozen of his grandfather’s oil paintings and handmade silkscreen prints. CABINtique is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and closed on Sunday and Monday.
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