Bildnis Salomon Gessner

Graff began the portrait of Gessner in a smoking jacket and without a wig in Zurich in 1781 and showed it the following year in the exhibition of the Dresden Academy of Art. Several copies and reproduction engravings are known (performed by Ekhart Berckenhagen: Anton Graff. Life and Work (Berlin 1967), no. 453). Salomon Gessner (Zurich 1730-1788) was a poet, publisher, illustrator, alderman, landscape painter in gouache. His main poetic works, translated into the most important European languages during his lifetime, are the 'Idyls' (1756) and 'The Death of Abel' (1761). Gessner's letter 'on landscape painting' published in 1770 had a stimulating effect on Joseph Anton Koch, John Constable, Ludwig Richter, Gottfried Keller. In 1780 Gessner edited the first two issues of the '[Neue] Zürcher Zeitung'. Gessner met Klopstock and was strongly associated with Wieland; his friendship with Graff, who visited him in Zurich (Sihlwald) in 1781 and 1786, goes back to 1765/66, when Graff was a guest at Gessner's Haus zum Schwanen at Münstergasse 9 and awaited his assignment to Dresden. Two old copies after the painting are also in the Kunsthaus Zürich (inv. 427 and inv. 611). Source