Background
Johann Christian Reinhart was born on January 24, 1761 at Hof in Bavaria, Germany.
Johann Christian Reinhart was born on January 24, 1761 at Hof in Bavaria, Germany.
He attended the gymnasium in Hof where he was encouraged to draw by one of his teachers. Following in his father's footsteps, Johann Christian started to study theology but turned more and more to art. He studied under Oeser at Leipzig and under Klingel at Dresden.
In 1789 he went to Rome, where he became a follower of the classicist German painters Carstens and Koch. He devoted himself more particularly to landscape painting and to aquatint engraving. Examples of his landscapes are to be found at most of the important German galleries, notably at Frankfort, Munich, Leipzig and Gotha. In Rome he executed a series of landscape frescoes for the Villa Massimi.
His best known work is represented by the "Eight Historic Landscapes" (1825), in the Palazzo Massimi, Rome, and "Four Views from Villa Malta, ” in tempera, painted for King Ludwig I of Bavaria. The New Pinakothek in Munich contains "Four Views Near Rome" (two dated 1836, 1846), the Leipzig Museum a "Wood on Seashore in a Storm" (1824) and "Landscape with Psyche" (1829), the Städel Institute, Frankfurt, a landscape with "Cain and Abel, ” and the Cologne Museum a "View from Tivoli. " To a collection of 72 etchings of prospects in Italy, published conjointly with Dies and Mechan under the title Malerisch radirte Prospecte aus Italien (1792–98) Reinhart contributed 24 plates. Besides these he etched many other Italian landscapes, and 38 animal studies, in all 170 plates.
In 1801 he married an Italian Anna Caffo and together they had three children.