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Framed engraving by Georg Friedrich Schmidt * dated 1742. Epoque XVIIIth.
Usury of use, see photo, posterior frame.
Georg Friedrich Schmidt *
born January 24, 1712 in Wandlitz, and died January 25, 1775 in Berlin, Germany, is a German painter, draftsman and etcher.
Schmidt first studied drawing and printmaking with Georg Paul Busch at the Berlin Academy in 1730 before enlisting in the Artillery Corps where he spent six years. After this time, he made the trip to Paris (joining Jean-Georges Wille in Strasbourg along the way) where he was a pupil of Larmessin after having tried to work with Lancret. On May 5, 1742, he was received at the Royal Academy of Paris on a portrait of Mignard as a reception piece. The same year, and the following year, he exhibited at the Salon de l'Académie in Paris.
In 1744 he returned to Berlin where he was appointed engraver to the King of Prussia. In 1757, the Empress Elisabeth, whose portrait he had engraved after Tocqué, brought him to Saint Petersburg where he organized a school of engraving intended to reproduce the portraits of the emperors of Russia.
Returning to Berlin in 1762, Schmidt produced a considerable body of work of 200 pieces, mostly portraits. At the end of his career he engraved some etchings. Described by Frederick II as "a skilled engraver, in Berlin, who makes beautiful pastel paintings", the Bénézit affirms that "one can perhaps reproach him for a certain coldness". For his contemporary Watelet, he "would perhaps be the first of the engravers if Corneille Visscher had not lived".
