Die Römischen Ansichten (Views of Rome)/Rovine del Palazzo de Cesari, Joseph Koch, artist, 1810, Italy, etching, Joseph Anton Koch (1768-1839) was an Austrian painter of the Neoclassical and later the German Romantic movements. He is probably the most significant Neoclassical landscape painter. Koch was influenced by the style of Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), which he sought to revive, informed by his own vision. Koch belonged to a generation of artists that used empirical images of nature in idealised compositions, and in doing so he romanticised nature. He trained at the Hohe Karlsschule (military academy), in Stuttgart from 1785 to 1791. However, he rejected the restrictive and outmoded teaching methods and he left the school in 1791 for Strasbourg.