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In the Schoolmaster's Room. An Illustration for F. H. Ziegenhagen's Philosophical Work

Daniel Chodowiecki

Basic information

ID: Г-IV-2841
Author: Daniel Chodowiecki
Name: In the Schoolmaster's Room. An Illustration for F. H. Ziegenhagen's Philosophical Work
Previous attributions: By the Picture
Country: Germany
Technique: etching
Material: paper
Dimensions: 7.4 x 13.7 cm (height x width)

Additionally

Type: graphic art
Genre: genre art
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

This work is the seventh of eight illustrations for the book by the German philosopher and philanthropist Franz Heinrich Ziegenhagen "Doctrine on the Right Relationship to the Creations of Nature and the Universal Happiness of Mankind, Which Can Be Achieved Solely Through Their Public Implementation" ("Lehre vom richtigen Verhältnisse zu den Schöpfungswerken, und die durch öffentliche Einführung derselben allein zu bewürkende algemeine Menschenbeglükkung"), published in Hamburg in 1792.
In the foreground on the left, a schoolmaster is depicted pointing his pupils – small, frightened children – to a picture that occupies the central and right-hand parts of the entire engraving. It reproduces the scene "The Fall of the Rebel Angels", in which the Archangel Michael expels the fallen angels from heaven with a spear. Although, according to tradition, the rebels transform into demons only upon reaching the earth, in the picture they become horrific devils while still in mid-flight. Below, several figures depicted near a huge stone – part of a split rock face – watch this process with horror. On the right, in the background, Adam and Eve are shown by the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
The artist approaches this scene with irony. The children are not so much frightened as they are awed by the scale of the image on the wall. In the bottom right corner of the composition, a cylindrical object stands on a small table. This is an optical device called the Laterna Magica (Magic Lantern). Therefore, the projection on the wall is an optical illusion by which the schoolmaster attempts to manipulate the children.

Inscriptions

At the bottom right is the artist's signature: "D. Chodowiecki del.& sc". In the centre, above the frame of the image, the number "7" is engraved.

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery