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Friendship. From the "Sincerity and Hypocrisy" ("Aufrichtigkeit und Heuchelei") Series

Daniel Chodowiecki

Basic information

ID: Г-IV-2711
Author: Daniel Chodowiecki
Name: Friendship. From the "Sincerity and Hypocrisy" ("Aufrichtigkeit und Heuchelei") Series
Country: Germany
Technique: etching
Material: paper on cardboard
Dimensions: 7.4 x 5 cm (height x width)

Additionally

Type: graphic art
Genre: genre art allegory
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

An illustration for the pocket calendar ("Göttinger Taschenkalender") for 1794, printed in Göttingen (Lower Saxony). It was produced in 1793 by the publishing house "Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung", headed by the publisher Johann Christian Dieterich, based on an etching by D. Chodowiecki.
An allegorical scene depicting, at its centre, two elegant young gentlemen who have met at the edge of a wood. Both are dressed in the fashion of the Enlightenment era: they wear frock coats, and on their heads are a tricorne and a top hat. The man on the right holds a walking stick under his arm. At first glance, the gentlemen appear to be greeting one another warmly, but there is a sense of tension and reserve between them. In addition, one of them is not merely shaking his acquaintance's hand, but also placing his other hand on the man's shoulder. Trees are depicted on either side of the figures. In the background on the right, the tower of a Lutheran church is visible. The artist treats this friendship with obvious irony.

Inscriptions

Below the print on the left is the engraved signature of the artist: "D. Chodowiecki fec". On the reverse of the cardboard, the inventory number of the Lviv Picture Gallery is indicated in pencil. In the lower margin below the image are the titles of the scene in German and French: "Die Freundschaft. / L'amitié".

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Friendship. From the "Sincerity and Hypocrisy" ("Aufrichtigkeit und Heuchelei") Series

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