Hubert Sattler was a landscape painter of a special kind: like hardly any other artist, he succeeded in satisfying people's burgeoning curiosity for distant lands and exotic places. The 19th century was characterized by the travelogues of renowned explorers. Such reading awakened a previously unknown wanderlust in the population: they wanted to see the world with their own eyes. A desire that was denied to most people at the time. Specialized travel painters took advantage of this longing. They created impressive works of art that invited people to take imaginary journeys around the globe. Hubert Sattler was one of the most masterful and successful representatives of this métier.

The Austrian got his artistic talent in the cradle. His father was the painter Johann Michael Sattler, the creator of the world-famous Sattler Panorama, - a nearly 125 square meter circular painting of the city of Salzburg. In order to present this panorama to an international audience, the Sattler family undertook a ten-year tour of Europe. During this trip they lived on a houseboat, where Hubert Sattler spent much of his childhood and youth. There he began to make his first sketches of foreign landscapes and cities. He learned the basics of painting from his father and, at the age of twelve, also attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. From his father, Hubert Sattler also adopted the method of presenting his paintings to the general public as a showman. For this purpose, he created large-format cosmoramas from his travel sketches. These were artificially illuminated and viewed through a peep-box system with a magnifying lens. Combined with an astonishing richness of detail, his pictures developed a realistic perspective: they virtually drew the viewer into the scenery and made the illusion of being on location perfect. The exhibition tours with the cosmoramas were not limited to Europe: Sattler also traveled with them through North America and even gave a successful guest performance on Broadway in New York.

In the course of his life, Hubert Sattler traveled almost the entire world. His expositions in search of the most beautiful motifs did not always go smoothly. Travel writer Ida Pfeiffer met Sattler in the Near East and accompanied him part of the way. In her diary, she described how the painter was spat upon and stoned while sketching in Damascus. She also reported that Sattler fell seriously ill in Lebanon and only found a camp on the hard ground after a thirteen-hour ride "more dead than alive." Still, travel remained a big part of Hubert Sattler's life. Even when he was long married with children, he traveled extensively and stayed in America for several years. Not only did he prove to be a talented artist, but he also had a strong business sense. With the entrance fees to his exhibitions and the sale of small-format paintings, he was able to make a handsome fortune. At the end of his creative period, he bequeathed his cosmoramas and his father's panorama to the city of Salzburg, where they can still be seen today in the specially created Panorama Museum. Hubert Sattler found his final resting place next to his father in a grave of honor at Salzburg's municipal cemetery.