Johann Alexander Thiele

After five years of apprenticeship as a printer in Erfurt, he was married in Arnstadt in 1710 and moved to Dresden in 1715, where he copied old paintings, was a student of Christoph Ludwig Agricola and worked briefly with Adam Manyoki, although he remained largely an auto-didact.

In 1738, he was named court painter for King Augustus III of Poland and, in 1740, acquired the patronage of Heinrich von Brühl.

Six years later, he commissioned to do another series of landscapes; this time of Mecklenburg, under the direction of Duke Christian Ludwig II.

[1] Three years after his death, the art historian and collector Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn wrote his biography (although it appears to be unavailable at present).

His son, Johann Friedrich Alexander Thiele [de], also became a well-known landscape painter.