Daniel Chodowiecki

Daniel Niklaus Chodowiecki (16 October 1726 – 7 February 1801) was a German[1] painter and printmaker of Huguenot and Polish ancestry, who is most famous as an etcher.

Gottfried Chodowiecki, Daniel's father, was a tradesman in Danzig and his mother, Henriette Ayrer, of Swiss ancestry, was a Huguenot.

When his father died, both Daniel (aged 16) and his younger brother Gottfried Chodowiecki went to live with their uncle in Berlin, who offered to educate them.

He was in tune with the developing spirit of the age, and many works reflect the cult of sensibility, and then the revolutionary and German nationalist feelings of the end of the century.

In printmaking, he is credited with the invention of the deliberate remarque, a small sketch on a plate lying outside the main image.

After the Partitions of Poland Chodowiecki wrote to Gräfin Solms-Laubach: "From my father's side I am Polish, a descendant of a brave nation which will soon vanish".

[4] In a letter to pl:Józef Łęski, a Polish astronomer, he wrote: "I consider it an honour to be a genuine Pole, even though I am now living in Germany".