Anton
Graff

He studied painting at the Ulrich Schellenberg in Wintertur and I. Hyde in Augsburg. He worked mainly in Germany. From 1766 he was invited by the Saxon elector to the position of court painter, taught at the Academy of arts in Dresden.

The author of numerous portraits and graphic portrait miniatures.

In the last years of his life he painted landscapes.

Died in 1813 in Germany in Dresden.

Anton Graf was born in a family of craftsman from Basel, he studied painting at home and in Augsburg and specialized in portrait painting. In 1766 he was appointed court painter and teacher at the Dresden Academy of arts, which he retained until his death. He was even rejected more lucrative offers from Berlin. In his portraits of the Grand personalities of that time, in particular, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Moses Mendelssohn, Johann Gottfried herder, Friedrich Schiller, Christian Felix Weiss, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Heinrich von Kleist and Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki, Friedrich Gedike. The main creation of the Graph is considered to be a portrait of the Prussian king Frederick the Great. By order of the Empress Catherine II, the artist in 1796, copies a number of paintings from the Dresden gallery, the Hermitage.

In the later period the works the Count turned to the landscape. The work of Anton Count influenced the work of artists Philipp Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich.

The name of Count Anton is the building of the technical vocational school in his hometown of Winterthur.