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In the Craft Workshop

Daniel Chodowiecki

Basic information

ID: Г-IV-2845
Author: Daniel Chodowiecki
Name: In the Craft Workshop
Country: Germany
Technique: etching
Material: paper
Dimensions: 13.2 x 6.6 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 engraving number "5" from the "Handbook of the Elements" ("Elementarwerk") by Johann Bernhard Basedow, the founder of the pedagogical movement known as philanthropism. The first edition, printed in Dessau (Germany), was illustrated by Daniel Chodowiecki in 1774. In subsequent editions of 1791 in Berlin and Leipzig, as part of a series entitled "Craft Workshops" ("Werkstätten"), the artist reused compositions from earlier engravings. This etching is one of them.
The scene depicts a workshop where masters are teaching apprentices their crafts. In the centre, a woman is showing three girls how to use a woodworking appliance. On the left, next to a boy who is trying to turn the wheel of a mechanical lathe, a teacher is standing and giving him instructions. On the right, a man with long hair is showing a female student how to use a screw mechanism correctly. Farm tools lie on the floor. In the background, in the centre, stands a large sculpture of an ancient goddess, which a student is finishing off, whilst the teacher, standing on the left, watches his work closely.
The series to which this engraving belongs was created as visual teaching material for children, to familiarise them with various professions, crafts, sciences and everyday life.

Inscriptions

The artist's signature, "D. Chodowiecki sc", is engraved in the bottom right-hand corner of the image. The number "6" appears in the centre above the border.

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

In the Craft Workshop

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