About the artist:

Adolf Friedrich Harper (*October 17, 1725 in Berlin - June 23, 1806) was a German landscape painter. Adolf Friedrich Harper was the son and pupil of the Prussian Cabinet painter Johann Harper (* in Stockholm; † 1746 in Potsdam). After his father's death he visited France and Italy, where he had the help of Richard Wilson and studies anfertigte from nature. In 1756, he came in herzoglich Württemberg Services: first used in the residence building, he was in 1759 appointed court painter and in 1761 a professor at the Duke Carl Eugen of Württemberg built in that year Académie des Arts, which was united later with the high Karlsschule , In 1784 he was appointed gallery director. From 1798 he spent, retired, his last years in his native city Berlin. As Reinhard Ferdinand Heinrich Fischer, Nicolas Guibal and the other sponsored by Duke Carl Eugen young men, he had to fulfill numerous orders and remained behind what he could afford. Harper, the Goethe called a "born landscape painter", had except his landscapes and flower and fruit pieces, lintels, theater and other decorations painting next to the Premier Peintre Nicolas Guibal in painting the air, flowers etc. assist in its painted ceiling. This was his art practice, how he himself felt later and complained openly, something mechanically Conventional and especially its color something hard. But to show his landscapes that have survived numerous in the Württemberg castles, great wealth of motifs, pleasing assortment and still instructive by the security of their simple technology means colors especially in the Treatment of the air and of the backgrounds. One sees that he had scooped in Rome at the sources of the best tradition. As a teacher at the art institutions of Duke Carl Eugen Harper took his fair share in the training of the many clever artists that emerged from it, besides Guibal. Behind the desk in the office of the German president hangs since the tenure of Christian Wulff Harpers Painting "Italian Landscape". He had so Walter Stöhrer "Great Nadja" of his predecessor Horst Köhler exchanged.