Johan Bernard Scheffer

Portrait of Leonardus van der Voort

Johann or Johan Bernard Scheffer (also Jean Baptist Scheffer), (1764 in Homberg, Hesse-Kassel – 30 June 1809 in Amsterdam)^[1] was a German-born painter and etcher active in the Netherlands and the father of the painter Ary Scheffer.

He was the son of Johann Werner Scheffer (1730-1799) and Catharine Maria Pfluger (1731-1799) ^[2] and a pupil of Johann Friedrich August Tischbein. By 1788 he lived and worked in Utrecht and from 1790 in Dordrecht where in October 1794 he married the miniature painter Cornelia Lamme (1769-1839), daughter of the landscape painter Arie Lamme. They had three sons who survived to adulthood: the portrait painter Ary Scheffers (1795-1858), the journalist and writer Karel Arnold Scheffer (1796-1853) and the painter Hendrik Scheffer (1798-1862). The family moved in 1798 from Dordrecht to The Hague, in 1801 to Rotterdam and in 1803 to Amsterdam.^[3][4] Scheffer produced several large historical works, and some portraits, including one of King Louis Bonaparte of Holland. In 1808 he became court painter of Louis Bonaparte in Amsterdam, but he died already a year later at the age of 44 or 45. He was buried 5 July 1809 in the Zuiderkerk.^[5]

References

1. Leo Ewals, Ary Scheffer, 1795-1858: gevierd romanticus, Waanders, 1996
2. John A. Fritchey, Ancestry of Margaret Ann (Fritchey) Trahan, 1969
3. Sander Paarlberg, Ary Scheffer, in the Biographical Dictionary of Dordrecht. (in Dutch)
4. Lamme, Cornelia in: Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland.
5. Johan Bernard Scheffer in the RKD

This article incorporates text from the article "SCHEFFER, Johann Baptist" in Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers by Michael Bryan, edited by Robert Edmund Graves and Sir Walter Armstrong, an 1886–1889 publication now in the public domain.

• Johan Bernard Scheffer at the RKD