Click on each title to browse Tischbein Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Oil Painting.
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He was one of a family of painters and was the pupil of his uncles in Hamburg. He went to Holland in 1771 and began to work as a portrait painter, having a great success at the court in Berlin after 1777. He became dissatisfied with portraiture and went to Munich, where he studied Dürer and the early German painters, going on to Italy in 1779. In 1783 he was in Rome for the second time and began to paint history pictures, but in 1786 he met Goethe, and in 1786/88 he painted the Goethe in The Roman Campagna (St?delsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt) on which his reputation chiefly rests. In 1789 he became director of the Naples Academy, and from 1791 supervised the engraving of the Greek vases belonging to Sir William Hamilton which were so important in the spread of Neoclassicism. In Naples he painted the famous beauty Charlotte Campbell as Erato (c. 1790, Edinborough). He returned to Germany in 1799.
Tischbein is usually called 'Goethe Tischbein'. The two other leading members of the family, his uncle and cousin, were nicknamed after their main place of work: Johann Heinrich the Elder, 'Kassel Tischbein' (1750-1812) and Johann Friedrich 'Leipzig Tischbein' (1750-1812). They were principally portraitists.