Daniel Chodowiecki

Daniel Niklaus Chodowiecki (16 October 1726 – 7 February 1801) was a German painter and printmaker of Huguenot and Polish ancestry, who is most famous as an etcher. He spent most of his life in Berlin, and became the director of the Berlin Academy of Art.

He was born in the city of Danzig (Gdańsk) in Poland, he kept close to the Huguenot scene, due to his ancestry.

According to Chodowiecki himself, his Polish nobleman paternal ancestor Bartłomiej Chodowiecki lived in the 16th century in Greater Poland, though this is not confirmed by independent records. Gottfried Chodowiecki, Daniel's father, was a tradesman in Danzig and his mother, Henriette Ayrer, of Swiss ancestry, was a Huguenot. Daniel's grandfather Christian was also a Danzig tradesman, who had moved his business there from Toruń. When his father died, both Daniel (aged 16) and his younger brother Gottfried Chodowiecki went to live with their uncle in Berlin, who offered to educate them. In Germany Daniel received artistic training from the painter Haid in Augsburg. His brother also became a painter.

He and his wife Jeanne Barez (1726–1785) had three daughters, Jeannette (b.