Adolf Pirsch (1858-1929) and landscape and portrait painter, was born in Gradaz in Krain, at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today Slovenia. He studied art at the Graz Academy, Antwerp, graduating in 1879.

He then went to Italy where he spent a year in Venice, Florence and Rome. Pirsch's first commissioned works were altar paintings for churches in Graz and Marburg and his first portrait exhibition took place in 1896 in Graz. Pirsch's most famous works of this period are the portraits of the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef and Pope Leo XIII, which can be seen in the Vatican.