Karl Wenzel Zajicek initially trained as a watchmaker. But he had already developed a passion for painting at a young age and received lessons in architecture and painting under Ludwig Krenn. In Vienna Zajicek regularly visited the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Albertina where he studied the great masters.

He painted mostly watercolors in which he chronicled life in Vienna during the reign of Emperor Franz Josef I. With a circular panorama of Vienna, which he painted after a drawing by Emil Hütter, Zajicek eventually establish himself as a painter. He received numerous commissions, also from the imperial court and created an extensive oeuvre of atmospheric watercolors. (tfa)