Father Franz Pforr, Yagang Georg Pforr, was an artist who specialized in images of horses. Mother of Johann Christian Pforr, came from an artistic family, Cisban. In 12 years, Franz Pforr lost my parents the following year only brother, and since 1801, was educated in Kassel uncle, a famous artist Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tishbeyna. There he began painting and in 1805 he entered the Academy of fine arts in Vienna, where his teacher was the artist-the classicist Heinrich Friedrich Fuger.
Pfarr and his fellow students Ludwig Vogel, Johann Konrad Hottinger and Friedrich Overbeck were dissatisfied with the training, instead of waiting for the orientation to classical art is a more modern approach and attention to spiritual values. They saw their own way in art in bringing together art of the old masters.
In 1809, the young artists founded the Union of St. Luke artistic Association promoting the ideas of romanticism. This has led to conflict in the Academy itself, with the result that Overbeck in 1810, was expelled from it, and the members of the Union of Saint Luke, including Pforr, went to Italy and 20 Jun 1810 arrived at by Napoleon's troops occupied Rome, where he settled in the convent of San Isidoro. Their goal was the study of the works of old masters and a return to the art of the Italian Renaissance. This movement became known later under the name nazarenkova and played a major role in the development of European romanticism early XX century.
Pforr died of tuberculosis in Rome at the age of 24 years before recognition of his work.
Legacy Pforr are only six paintings ("Graf von Habsburg", "Entry of Emperor Rudolf into Basel", "Saint George", "Self", as well as the allegory of friendship in itself, and Overbeck) and several hundred drawings, including the illustrations to don Quixote and to the poem Goethe's Goetz von berlichingen. Despite this, it is referred to the founders and most important representatives of German romanticism. In his work a strong religious theme.