Jacob Philipp Hackert

Who was Jacob Philipp Hackert?

Jacob Philipp Hackert was a landscape painter from Brandenburg, who did most of his work in Italy.

Hackert was born in 1737 in Prenzlau in the Margraviate of Brandenburg. He trained with his father Philipp and his uncle, before going to the Akademie der Künste in Berlin in 1758. Later he traveled to Swedish Pomerania and Stockholm, where he painted murals.

He spent from 1765 to 1768 in Paris with the Swiss artist Balthasar Anton Dunker, where he focused on painting in gouache. He met and was inspired by Claude Joseph Vernet, who was already famous as a painter of landscapes and seascapes, and the German engraver Johann Georg Wille.

In 1768 Hackert left Paris with his brother Georg, and went to Italy, basing himself mainly in Rome and Naples, where he produced many works for Sir William Hamilton. He travelled all over Italy, gaining a reputation as a talented landscape painter. He became famous everywhere in Europe due to his works for Catherine the Great, the cicle of paintings about Battle of Chesma, and Pope Pius VI.

In 1786 he went to work for Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies in Naples. He advised on the creation of a painting restoration laboratory at the Museo di Capodimonte, and supervised the transfer of the Farnese collections from Rome to Naples. During this period he acted also as a secret informant of Russia, his contact being the Russian diplomat Andrey Razumovsky.