Balthasar Denner (1685 – 1749)

• Was a German painter.
• He painted mostly half-length and head-and-shoulders portraits and a few group portraits of families in interiors.
• He is particularly noted for his heads of old men and women.

• Denner was born in the city of Altona, now incorporated into Hamburg.

• At the time Altona was part of the Danish kingdom.

• His father Jacob Denner was a Mennonite minister and a dyer.

• Balthasar had seven sisters; he was the only son.

• When he was eight years old he had an accident and for the rest of his life he walked with a limp.

• His convalescence was slow and to cope with boredom Denner started to draw and copy paintings by Berchem and Bloemaert.

• His teacher was a Dutchman, Frans van Amama.

• In 1696 the family moved to Danzig, where Denner practiced oil painting between 1698 and 1700.

• In 1701 the family moved back to the Hanseatic town.

• Balthasar became a clerk for his uncle, who was a merchant.

• In 1707 he became a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. 

• Denner began his career as a painter of miniatures.

• In 1709 he painted the nine-year-old Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp and his sister in miniature.

• In 1712 he married and the next year he moved to Hamburg when Altona was destroyed by Magnus Stenbock during the Great Nordic War.

• In 1714 he made a trip to Amsterdam; in 1715 to London; in 1717 to Copenhagen.

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