Anna Dorothea Therbusch

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Anna Dorothea Therbusch
Self-portrait from 1761
Born(1721-07-23)23 July 1721
Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia
Died9 November 1782(1782-11-09) (aged 61)
Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia
Other namesLisiewski (maiden name) Madame Therbouche
OccupationPainter

Anna Dorothea Therbusch (born Anna Dorothea Lisiewski, Polish: Anna Dorota Lisiewska, 23 July 1721 – 9 November 1782) was a prominent Rococo painter born in the Kingdom of Prussia. About 200 of her works survive, and she painted at least eighty-five verified portraits.[1]

Life

Anna Dorothea Therbusch was born in

Watteau, Lancret, and Pater – artists who Frederic II especially admired.[5]

Therbusch painted in all genres. She also did history paintings, and experimented with Dutch-style

Gerard Dou.[5]

By the end of her life, she had received honours from Berlin, Stuttgart, and Mannheim. She made lucrative commissions from her works and eventually received royal patronage, after many letters of introduction from her patrons in Paris, Italy, Germany, and Prussia.[5]

Marriage

Anna Dorothea married Berlin innkeeper Ernst Friedrich Therbusch (1711–1773) in 1742[3] and gave up painting until around 1760 to help her husband in the restaurant. Not until her spousal obligations were discharged,[6] as a "short-sighted, middle-aged woman",[7] did she return to her art career in 1760.[3] She had three children by the age of forty. She left Berlin to paint in Stuttgart for the court of Duke Karl Eugen, Duke of Wurttemberg, seeking increased recognition for her works.[5]

Notable works

The Swing and Game of Shuttlecock (Neues Palais, Potsdam) are a pair of conversation pieces that defined her first period of work.

Jean-Antoine Watteau and similar to those of Nicolas Lancret.[3]

Paris

She does not lack the talent to arouse interest in a country like ours, she lacks youth, beauty, modesty, coquetterie. She could have been enthusiastic about the merits of our great artists, taken lessons from them, had more bosom and a handsome posterior and have had to offer both to the artists.

Denis Diderot.[8]

Therbusch's first recorded return to painting was in 1761 in the

French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture displayed her work first, proudly supporting a female artist. Denis Diderot, the controversial and outspoken art critic and philosopher, was sympathetic to her, even to the point of posing naked for her.[9][10] Anna Dorothea was elected as a member of the Académie Royale in 1767,[3] lived with Diderot and met famous artists,[11] and even painted Philipp Hackert[1]
but she remained unsuccessful in Paris. That time is, however, seen as her most creative.

Self-portrait, 1777

Return to Prussia

Paris was, and is, an expensive city and Anna Dorothea had financial difficulties. From November 1768 until early 1769, the heavily indebted painter returned to Berlin, via Brussels and the Netherlands, and became the primary painter in Prussia, where she was held in high esteem. She was portrait painter to

Catherine II of Russia (Catherine the Great).[12] Though Anna Dorothea never went to Russia, Russian collectors also appreciated her work.[13] She also met the group of artists surrounding Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Therbusch would continue to paint into her late life. She frequently painted self-portraits, twelve total. As her eyesight started to fail her, she would frequently add monocles into her self-portraits. Her late paintings were loosely classical, with garbs and hints of Roman goddesses.[14]

She died in Berlin on 9 November 1782 at the age of 61,

Dorotheenstadt cemetery, whose pertaining church was destroyed in World War II
. Her tomb remains intact.

Her relationship with Diderot inspired Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt to write his play Der Freigeist ("The Free Spirit"), also known as Der Libertin ("The Libertine").

References and sources

References
  1. ^ a b Artnet.com, retrieved 21 July 2009
  2. ^ He is the sun, she is the moon, by Heide Wunder, retrieved on 20 July 2009
  3. ^
    OCLC 48951109
    .
  4. ^ Page 37, Dictionary of Women Artists by Delia Gaze, p.37
  5. ^
    doi:10.7202/1012185ar
    .
  6. ISSN 0261-3077
    . Retrieved 2023-07-02.
  7. ^ Who does she think she is? Archived 2017-02-07 at the Wayback Machine, The Independent, 4 April 1998, retrieved on 20 July 2009
  8. ^ Quoted in The Dictionary of Women Artists by Delia Gaze, p.99
  9. ISBN 978-1-884964-21-3
    .
  10. ISBN 0-19-501506-1
    .
  11. ^ Portraiture: Facing the Subject, by Joanna Woodall, p. 154, retrieved on 20 July 2009
  12. ^ St. Petersburg the Great, The Washington Post, 7 Feb 2003, retrieved on 20 July 2009
  13. ^ Russian Revelation; At Women in the Arts, Catherine's St. Petersburg Resurrected[permanent dead link], The Washington Post, 23 Feb 2003, retrieved on 20 July 2009
  14. ^ Morril, R., Wright, K., and Elderton, L. (2019). Great Women Artists. Phiadon.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Sources

This article was translated from its equivalent in the German Wikipedia on 20 July 2009.

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anna_Dorothea_Therbusch&oldid=1214357169"