Jakob Philipp Hackert

pseudonym: -

birth data

date of birth: 1737

place of birth: Prenzlau /Uckermark

death data

date of death: 1807

death: S.Piero di Careggi

biography

The landscape painter of early classicism Jakob Philipp Hackert was born in 1737 in Prenzlau. He began his artistic training at the workshop of his father and his uncle, a decorative painter. From 1758 onwards, Hackert visited the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin and turned increasingly to landscape painting. Under contract from Baron Adolf Friedrich von Olthof, Hackert traveled to Stralsund and Rügen, where he completed wall paintings at the town hall as well as at the Gutshaus Boldevitz. Between 1765 and 1768, Hackert lived in Paris, where he became friends with Balthasar Anton Dunker and the engraver Johann Georg Wille. The veduta of the painter Claude Joseph Vernet also became a source of inspiration for him in Paris. In 1768 the painter traveled with his brother to Italy and settled down in Rome. Hackert was commissioned in 1771 by Count Orlow in the name of Empress Catherine the Great to paint the Russian naval victory over the Turks at Tschesme in a cycle of pictures. In 1786 Jakob Philipp Hackert was appointed court painter by King Ferdinand IV of Naples. Hackerts work was successful and well appreciated all over Europe by prominent Italian travelers, including German artists, English nobles and the Russian tsar family. In 1787, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe visited the painter and even took drawing lessons with him, as the biographical sketches published by Goethe in 1811 about the artist prove. In 1799 Hackert escaped to Florence via Livorno and Pisa, where he settled in 1803, following the Lazzaroni uprising. In 1807 Jacob Philipp Hackert died in San Piero di Careggio in Florence. The artists works are displayed in many renowned collections, such as the Kupferstichkabinett, the National Gallery of the Berlin State Museums and the Kunsthalle in Kiel.