Johann Heinrich M?ntz

(b Mulhouse, 28 Sept 1727; d Kassel, bur May 1798). Swiss architect, painter, draughtsman and writer. He served as an engineer in the French army (1748-54) and drew Gothic monuments in Spain (1748) and copied ancient vases and painted idyllic landscapes in Rome (1749-54). He then stayed from 1755 to 1759 with Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill, where he worked as a topographical artist, portrait painter and architectural draughtsman. Having left Walpole after a domestic dispute, M?ntz attempted to support himself through commissions, producing drawings of a Gothic cathedral and possibly the Alhambra for Kew Gardens, a dining room and cloister (New Haven, CT, Yale U., Lewis Walpole Lib.) for Richard Bateman, and an oval room for Lord Charlemont, to complement his vase collection. All were in the Gothic style, as were a number of architectural drawings later used in a guide by Robert Manwaring (1760). M?ntz left England in 1762 and spent a year recording monuments in Greece and Jerusalem before settling in Holland, where he worked until 1778 as a metallurgist while continuing to paint imaginary scenes. Following a period of patronage by Polish royalty (1778-85), for whom he acted as a topographical artist, architect and adviser, in 1786 M?ntz went to Wilhelmsh?he, where he spent the remainder of his life recording the gardens and surrounding landscape. He wrote three complete treatises and two treatise proposals, and he contributed illustrations to a treatise on engraving by Johann Heinrich Tischbein II (1742-1808). Other subjects included ancient vases and the oval, encaustic painting, smelting, Gothic architecture and practical painting. M?ntz's works display three common characteristics: a technical approach to art, a knowledge of antiquity and a sense of what interested his contemporaries.

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