Jacob Philipp Hackert

Jacob Philipp Hackert was born on 15 September 1737 in Prenzlau, in the Margraviate of Brandenburg, Kingdom of Prussia. He trained first with his father, the portrait and animal painter Philipp Hackert, and with his uncle, the decorative painter Johann Gottlieb Hackert. He went on to study landscape painting at the Berlin Academy under Blaise Nicolas Le Sueur, a period sources place variously in 1754, 1755, or 1758.

According to some biographical sources, Hackert then worked in Paris from 1765 to 1768, training in the atelier of the engraver Johann Georg Wille and studying gouache painting with the Swiss artist Balthasar Anton Dunker; this specific period is not corroborated across all reference sources consulted. In 1768 he left for Italy, settling in Rome and joining the circle of German artists there, including figures associated with Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Anton Raphael Mengs. He was named an honorary member of the Berlin Royal Academy in 1783. He met King Ferdinand IV of Naples in 1782 and was appointed his court painter in 1786, a position he held until fleeing Naples during the revolution of 1799. In Naples in 1787 he met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who praised his skill in his Italian Journey and, after Hackert's death, edited and published his memoirs.

Hackert settled permanently at San Piero di Careggi, near Florence, where he bought a house in 1803. He died there on 28 April 1807, the date given by Tate, the German national biography (Deutsche Biographie), and the Pinakothek collection catalogue; the Italian biographical dictionary Treccani instead records a death on 9 May 1807, following a second stroke after an initial stroke on 28 April, and this profile follows the majority-sourced date.

Hackert was one of the most celebrated landscape painters of his era, admired across Europe for views of Italy that combined topographical accuracy with idealized, classicizing composition. Goethe was among his most influential champions, praising his precision and his working method in his own writings and later editing Hackert's memoirs for publication. His reputation faded through much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as taste shifted toward Romantic and modern landscape painting, but institutional interest has grown again in recent decades, reflected in his inclusion in exhibitions at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the British Museum, the State Hermitage Museum, Museum Folkwang, and the Teylers Museum. Scholars continue to treat him as a key transitional figure between Grand Tour view painting and the emerging language of Romantic landscape.

Hackert's market is that of a historically important but thinly traded Old Master: individual works surface at auction infrequently. The highest publicly documented result found in current research is EUR 216,000 (including premium) for View of Mulina in the Valley of La Cava, sold through Lempertz in Cologne; the exact sale date is not available in public sources, so this figure should be read as the highest known price rather than a confirmed all-time record. Two further Lempertz results for the artist are documented at EUR 176,400 for Eruption of Vesuvius on 8th August 1779 and EUR 170,100 for View of the Arno Valley and Fiesole, both also without confirmed sale dates.

There is no catalogue raisonne and no gallery or estate that represents Hackert today; works pass through the Old Master departments of major auction houses and through the secondary market, with authentication resting on provenance, period documentation, and specialist expertise rather than a certifying body. Public price data for his work is sparse and inconsistent, so any single result, including the highest documented sale, should be treated with caution rather than as a settled benchmark. His deep presence in major museum collections across Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Britain, and Russia is the strongest evidence of his lasting standing, and remains a more reliable signal than the limited auction record.