Background
Gerhard von Kügelgen was born at Bacharach am Rhein.
Gerhard von Kügelgen was born at Bacharach am Rhein.
After leaving school in 1789, he studied painting in Koblenz.
Beginning in 1791, he worked in Bonn, where he painted portraits of Elector Archduke Maximilian Franz of Austria, minister Ferdinand August von Spiegel zum Desenberg, and the Count of Waldstein. In 1800, Kügelgen married Helene Marie Zoege von Manteuffel. They had three children together.
The other children were Gerhard (born 1806), and Adelheid (born 1808).
During his career, Gerhard von Kügelgen painted portraits of Caspar David Friedrich, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Gottfried Herder, August von Kotzebue, Friedrich Schiller, Johann Gottfried Seume, Ludwig Uhland, Zacharias Werner, Christoph Martin Wieland, Johann Carl Simon Morgenstern and other writers, artists and scholars of his time. In 1820, Kügelgen was killed by a thief while en route from his studio in Loschwitz to Dresden.
He is buried in the Old Catholic Cemetery in Dresden.
After moving to Dresden, Kügelgen"s villa "Gottessegen" became a meeting place for artists and adherents of early Romanticism.
He was a professor at the Academy of Arts in Dresden and a member of both the Prussian and Russian Academies of Arts.