Die fliegenden Männer des Krieges - World War I paintings and lithographs by Karl Sterrer

Gottfried Freiherr von Banfield and his Fellow Airmen, 1918. Von Banfield was the most successful Austro-Hungarian naval aviator of the First World War.

Karl Sterrer (4 December 1885, Vienna – 10 June 1972, Vienna), Austrian painter and engraver, he was the son of the sculptor of the same name. He studied at the Wiener Akademie der bildenden Künste. Adept at both landscapes and portraits, he won the schools' prestigious Rompreis (a travel scholarship akin to the French Prix de Rome) in 1908, and in 1910 and 1911 he traveled to the south of Italy. In 1911 he also became a member of the Künstlerhaus Wien.

I haven't been able to find the identities of von Banfield's two comrades.

In November 1915, he joined the Landsturm and applied to the propaganda service as a war artist; the following year he was sent to the Russian and Italian theaters of war. In the summer of 1918 he was transferred to the Tyrolean front at the special request of the Air Force. There he drew and painted portraits of aviator pilots, pictures of airplanes, and advertising posters for war bonds. (The "K.u.K." attached to some of these images stands for K.u.K. Luftfahrtruppen - fully, Kaiserliche und Königliche Luftfahrtruppen - which was the Imperial and Royal Air Force of  Austria-Hungary until the collapse of the empire in 1918. It saw combat on both the Eastern and Italian fronts during World War I.)

Beobachter Oberleutnant (Observer First Lieutenant) Robert Kabelac, 1918.

Kampfflieger - Oberleutnant Feldpilot (Fighter pilot - First Lieutenant field pilot) Fritz Nawratil, FLIK 3, 1918. "FLIK" appears to be a base.

Unknown.

Unknown Aviators, circa 1918.

Fliegerkompanie (flight companie) Nr. 8 K.u.K. Feldpilot - Rittmeister (field pilot captain) von Lehmann, with Beobachter Oberleutnant 
E. Schicht and Beobachter Oberleutnant Karl Freiherr von Westenholz, 1917. (It's possible this drawing is actually in color.)

K.u.K. Feldpilot Rudolf Stanger, 1916.

"Subscribe to the War Loan!", 1917.

He was awarded the Reichel Prize, in 1919, And two years later, he accepted the post of Professor of Fine Arts at the Vienna Academy where Leopold Hauer, Hans Fronius, Rudolf Hausner, and Max Weiler were among his students. Dismissed at the time of the Anschluss, he was reinstated after joining the Nazi party. Because of that affiliation, he was dismissed once again at the end of the war, though he was later granted his pension. After 1946, he devoted himself to religious subjects. In 1957 he received the Große Österreichische Staatspreis für Bildende Kunst (Austrian State Grand Prize for Fine Art). He died at the age of eighty-six and is buried in the Hütteldorfer cemetery.

*

Six other works by Sterrer.

Beethoven, 1920. The steeple of Vienna's St. Stephen's Cathedral can be seen through the window.

Study, no date.

Deer, 1943.

Atlas, 1910.

Melancholie, circa 1920.

The Dream from the Mountain, 1925.