HACKERT, German family of painters and printmakers, active in Italy

The Berlin portrait and animal painter Philipp Hackert (d. 1768) had five artist sons. The eldest and most famous was Philipp Hackert, a landscape painter whose international experience and views in the tradition of Claude Lorrain proved highly influential when he settled in Naples in the late 18th century. The second son, Carl Ludwig Hackert (1740-1796), travelled in France and then settled in Rome in 1772 with his older brother, who encouraged him to take up landscape painting in oil and gouache. In 1778 Carl Ludwig went to Geneva and Lausanne, producing a series of coloured engravings of views of Switzerland and Savoy. He committed suicide. The third son, Johann Gottlieb Hackert (1744-1773), after studying at the Berlin Akademie, worked with Philipp in Paris and Rome from 1766. He specialized in landscape and animal studies, producing gouaches in both genres for Lady Hamilton in Naples in 1770. In this year he went to England, where he showed work at the Royal Academy. The fourth son, Wilhelm Hackert (1748-1780), journeyed in 1772 to Rome, where he worked under Anton Raphael Mengs. In 1774, while working in Tuscany, he met Admiral Orlov, and through this contact he travelled to Russia, where he became a drawing master. The fifth son, Georg Hackert, was a distinguished engraver, turning many of Philipp's paintings into prints.




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