Johann Georg Trautmann

1713 Zweibrücken – 1769 Frankfurt am Main

Although Johann Georg Trautmann’s oeuvre reveals various sources of inspiration, his reputation is due mainly due to his work in the style of Rembrandt, which enjoyed great esteem during his lifetime. Thanks to the good offices of Goethe, Trautmann received a commission for a few paintings from the French Count of Thoran in about 1759. Goethe reports that Trautmann “Rembrandised” some resurrection episodes from the New Testament (see Goethe, Aus meinem Leben, vol. I, p. 198). Trautmann can be seen as the representative of a group of Frankfurt artists who responded in their work to the late eighteenth-century enthusiasm among art collectors and critics for Rembrandt and Dutch seventeenth century art.