Franz Hecker was a German landscape and Impressionist painter. He was born on November 15, 1870 in Bersenbrück, Germany and studied at the Düsseldorf Academy where his fellow students included Fritz Overbeck and Otto Modersohn. He traveled around Europe, studying at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1895 and traveling to Italy in 1898, before settling in the town Osnabruck, Germany, where he painted in the Impressionist style, focusing on various scenes and people around the town.

One of his most famous works, Unter Der Alten Kastanie (Under the Old Chestnut) (1914), depicts an unoccupied bench beneath the foliage of a large chestnut tree and is reminiscent of Gustav Klimt’s The Park (1910), to which Hecker’s painting has been frequently compared.

Hecker created over a 1,000 works, in many different styles, including commissions for the Town Hall of Bersenbrücker. Franz Hecker died during an Allied bombing raid on November 21, 1944 in Osnabruck, Germany.