Johann Heinrich Tischbein d. Ä.

Coming from a widespread family of artists who were active over several generations, Johann Heinrich Tischbein was apprenticed to the wallpaper painter Johannes Zimmermann and the court painter Johann Georg von Freese in Kassel. From 1736-41 he worked for his brother Johann Valentin and was in the service of smaller princely courts. In 1743, financially supported by Count Johann Philipp von Stadion, he went to Paris, where he studied under Carle van Loo. In 1749 he travelled to Giambattista Piazetta in Venice, and in 1750/51 he stayed in Rome.
After moving to Mainz in the entourage of Count Stadion, he was appointed court painter in Kassel in 1753 by Landgrave Wilhelm VIII of Hesse-Kassel, where Tischbein settled in 1754. At the same time he began to decorate the landgravial summer palace of Wilhelmsthal near Kassel, for which he painted a total of 66 paintings, including the “Ancestor and Beauty Gallery” with numerous portraits of ladies and the Telemach cycle. Mythological histories and portraits remained his preferred subjects even during the French occupation, when he accepted new commissions outside Kassel on various journeys.
In addition to his work as a court painter, Tischbein held the post of professor of drawing and painting at the newly founded Collegium Carolinum from 1762 and was appointed professor at the Academy of Arts in 1776.