(b Haina, 14 Oct 1722; d Kassel, 22 Aug 1789). Painter. He was apprenticed to Johann Baptist Zimmermann, Johann Georg von Freese (1701-75) and his brother Johann Valentin Tischbein (1715-68) before training with Carle Vanloo in Paris (1748) and with Giovanni Battista Piazzetta in Venice (1749). He copied the Venetian Masters and visited Rome; he returned to Germany in 1751. The following year he settled permanently in Kassel as court painter to the Landgrave William VIII of Hesse-Kassel. He also served as professor of the Akademie in Kassel from 1762. Among his earliest successes was the Sch?nheitsgalerie for William VIII, a collection of portraits of aristocratic women painted in a conservative Rococo style (1752-5; Kassel, Schloss Wilhelmsh?he). The amiable charm of his worldly style and technical virtuosity soon established him among the foremost portrait painters, particularly of women, of the period.

Part of the Tischbein family

See the Abbreviations for further details.

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Tischbein, Johann Heinrich Wilhelm (Hainau, Hesse, 1751-1829, Eutin), German painter, studied in Holland and then became a fashionable portrait painter in Berlin. He was in Rome from 1779 to 1781 and again from 1783 to 1789, meeting Goethe there in 1786, with whom he was on terms of close friendship for about a year. From this time date two of Tischbein's best-known works, the oil painting Goethe in der Campagna and the sepia drawing Goethe am Fenster seiner Wohnung in Rom.

In 1789 Tischbein became director of the Naples Academy, where he remained for ten years. After spells of work in Kassel and Hamburg he settled in Eutin, Holstein. In addition to portraits he painted historical pictures and landscapes. His autobiography, Aus meinem Leben (2 vols.), was published posthumously in 1861.

(yō'hän hīn'rĭkh vĭl'hĕlm tĭsh'bīn) , 1751–1829, German classical painter and etcher. He was a popular portrait painter of the German royalty. He also executed several portraits of Goethe (e.g., Goethe in the Roman Campagna, 1786, Goethemuseum, Frankfurt). Tischbein worked for a time in Naples, making engravings from Greek vases. Many of his etchings are illustrations for the works of Homer.

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