Adrian ZINGG
St. Gallen 1734 - Leipzig 1816
Biography
Born in Switzerland, Adrian Zingg received his early artistic training in Zurich and Bern. He had some success as a topographical artist of Swiss views before entering the Paris studio of Johann Georg Wille in 1759. He lived in Paris until 1766, producing prints after Dutch, Flemish and German artists that were much admired. In 1766, accompanied by his friend and fellow artist Anton Graff, he left Paris for Dresden, where he was to work for most of his career. Zingg established an engraver’s workshop, and his prints after the work of earlier Netherlandish and French masters earned him a considerable reputation. Together with Graff, Zingg made several sketching tours throughout the province of Saxony, in particular the remote and mountainous Elbsandsteingebirge region which came to be known as the ‘sächsische Schweiz’, or the ‘Saxon Switzerland’. A member of the Academies of Vienna and Berlin, Zingg was appointed a professor of landscape drawing at the Kunstakademie in Dresden in 1803, and among his students was the young Caspar David Friedrich. A substantial group of drawings by Adrian Zingg, numbering some seventy-five sheets, is today in the Kupferstichkabinett in Dresden.
