Johann Karl Jacob Gerst

1792–1854, Berlin

Johann Karl Jacob Gerst, who began work as an assistant painter at the Königliche Schauspiele in 1815, received a permanent position as royal scene painter in Berlin in 1818 and in that capacity executed a number of designs by Karl Friedrich Schinkel in addition to his own stage designs. Gerst’s contemporaries appreciated his “original compositional talent” and “deeply poetical, artistic mind” (Thieme-Becker).