Balthasar Denner (German painter) 1685 - 1749
Balthasar Denner was a German painter, highly-regarded as a portraitist. He painted mostly half-length and head-and-shoulders portraits and a few group portraits of families in interiors. Usually Denner concentrated on the face; clothes and paraphernalia were done by other painters or later his daughter. (Denner had five girls and one boy. I think this is his daughter Catherina who assisted him. Catharina, is depicted in his painting 'Musik und Malerei'. Unfortunately she died already in 1744.) Alongside the court art of 18th-century Germany there existed another, incomparably more modest, trend linked with the middle levels of society, the burghers. Denner is a good representative of this trend, in his works paying particular attention to the details of a sitter's appearance. Denner worked mainly in Hamburg, and other German towns, and achieved wide fame thanks to his portraits, always painted with great care. Especially valuable are his likenesses of old people, where he meticulously depicted each wrinkle and even each pore on the face of his model. This image of a modest elderly woman with a kind, peaceful gaze is found in a large number of replicas.
