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In the Craft Workshop

Daniel Chodowiecki

Basic information

ID: Г-IV-2846
Author: Daniel Chodowiecki
Name: In the Craft Workshop
Country: Germany
Technique: etching
Material: paper
Dimensions: 13 x 6.7 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 engraving number "5" from "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 specialists teach apprentices crafts. In the centre, a woman is showing a girl how to work with threads on a loom, the spinning wheel of which is being turned by another apprentice, shown from behind. On the left stands a master, who is watching closely as an apprentice sits at the loom, weaving the fabric by interlacing the warp threads. Tools for work are hung on the wall. On the right, the master and his apprentice are busy constructing a tall column. The girl, standing on a platform, is fitting its capital. Through an opening in the wall in the centre, the background of the composition is revealed – there, master-builders are erecting the wooden framework of a building.
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 and the date, "D. Chodowiecki del. & sc. 1791", are engraved in the bottom right-hand corner of the image. The number "5" appears in the centre above the border.

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

In the Craft Workshop

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