TISCHBEIN, German family of artists

German family of artists. Between the early 18th century and the late 19th this family from Hesse produced 28 artists and artisans, a third of them women, who were active throughout Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Johann Heinrich Tischbein (1682-1764), an artisan in Haina, had seven sons: the fifth, Johann Heinrich Tischbein I, was a noted portrait painter in Kassel. The second, Johann Valentin Tischbein (1715-1768), had a son, Johann Friedrich August Tischbein, who also established himself as a portrait painter, in Leipzig; while the first, Johann Conrad Tischbein (1712-1778), was father to Johann Heinrich Tischbein II, the author of a treatise on engraving (Kassel, 1790) and to Wilhelm Tischbein, who worked in Naples and painted Goethe's portrait. The family's three most famous members are thus known, respectively, as 'der Kasseler', 'der Leipziger' and 'der Neapolitaner' or 'Goethe Tischbein'. Their portrait work contributed to the transition in German art from the Late Baroque and Rococo to Neo-classicism and early naturalism. Christian Wilhelm Tischbein (1751-1824), an architect as well as a painter, was the son of the fourth of the seven brothers from Haina, while the painter August Anton Tischbein (1805-after 1867) was the grandson of the sixth, Jacob Tischbein (1725-1791).