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Title Page of "Königl. Grosbritannischer Historischer Genealogischer Calender für 1789" (Royal Historical and Genealogical Calendar of Great Britain for 1789)

Daniel Chodowiecki

Basic information

ID: Г-IV-2699
Author: Daniel Chodowiecki
Name: Title Page of "Königl. Grosbritannischer Historischer Genealogischer Calender für 1789" (Royal Historical and Genealogical Calendar of Great Britain for 1789)
Country: Germany
Technique: etching
Material: paper
Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.1 cm (height x width)

Additionally

Type: engraving
Genre: decorative mythological painting
Provenance: Purchased from O. Bushel, 1977

Information about author

Author: Daniel Chodowiecki
Artist's lifetime: 1726–1801
Country: Poland, Germany
Biography: Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki (1726, Gdańsk – 1801, Berlin) – a Polish-German artist, printmaker and painter, a master of etching and book illustration, a representative of the academic movement, and one of the leading exponents of sentimentalism in 18th-century German art.
The artist's father was a merchant, a descendant of a noble family. His mother came from a family of Swiss Huguenots. The young Daniel, continuing the family tradition, began working as a merchant. At the age of 17, he went to Berlin for a commercial apprenticeship, where he spent most of his life. Towards the end of his career, he became the director of the Prussian Academy of Arts (Preußische Akademie der Künste).
In the 1750s, the artist developed an interest in painting, and later in printmaking, becoming one of the leading book illustrators. Between 1770 and 1774, together with Johann Bernhard Basedow, the founder of the philanthropic movement in education, he worked on the four-volume publication "Elementary Textbook for Young People" ("Elementarwerk für die Jugend"). Chodowiecki created over 100 illustrations for it using the copper engraving technique, including some dedicated to the Crusades.
In 1781, the artist produced 12 illustrations for a play by Gustav Friedrich Wilhelm Großmann entitled "No More Than Six Dishes" ("Nicht mehr als sechs Schüsseln"). This comedy, with its strongly social-critical undertones, is considered one of the earliest outstanding dramatic works in German bourgeois literature.
Around 2,000 engravings by Chodowiecki on various subjects, executed in the techniques of etching and copper engraving, have survived to this day. One of his contemporaries wrote that, were it not for Chodowiecki's illustrations, countless books would never have found their readers. The artist created a large number of painted and graphic portraits, as well as genre scenes of burgher life, mostly executed in pen and ink. The total number of the artist's surviving drawings amounts to around 4,000.
Daniel Chodowiecki's works are held in Germany – at the Kupferstichkabinett (Museum of Prints and Drawings) in Berlin, the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig, and the Städel Museum in Frankfurt; in Poland – at the National Museum in Gdańsk; in Ukraine – at Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery, Vasyl Stefanyk Lviv National Scientific Library of Ukraine and the Kharkiv Art Museum, as well as in museums in Washington, Madrid and London.

Object description

The title page of a pocket calendar, the central part of which is occupied by a rococo cartouche bearing inscriptions. At the top, in capital cursive letters, it reads: "Königl. Grosbritannischer/ Historischer/ Genealogischer/ CALENDER/ für/ 1789". Below is a garland, beneath which is the inscription: "mit Kupfern von Chodowiecki/ Lauenburg/ beÿ I. G. Berenberg/ in Commission/ beÿ H. C. Siedentopf/ in Göttingen". Above the cartouche is a medallion depicting the profile of an old man – the god Saturn. To his right is a scythe; to his left, the inscription "TEMPUS". Above the medallion is a female face, presumably that of Medusa, with locks of hair resembling snakes. Beneath the medallion is a garland held by two figures: Spring, depicted as a putto with butterfly wings, on the left; and Summer, depicted as a maiden holding a sheaf of wheat to her breast, on the right. At the bottom, near the cartouche on the left, Autumn is depicted as a young man with a basket of fruit, and on the right, Winter is depicted as a barefoot old man in a cloak, warming his hands over a fire. To the left of the composition is a full-length profile portrait of a monk.

Inscriptions

At the bottom right, beneath the image, is the artist's signature: "D. Chodowiecki inv. et fec.". On the reverse, at the bottom – the inventory number of the Lviv Picture Gallery.

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery