Gerard Wigmana (1673 – 1741)

• Was an 18th-century painter from the Dutch Republic.
• Gerard Wigmana was born in Workum in Friesland as the son of the merchant Jan Tiaerdts and his wife Gaitske Gatzes Wigmana.
• Wigmana took drawing lessons from a local glass painter and studied with the German painter Joachim Burmeister, before becoming a student of Jelle Sybrandi, a member of the Society of Dutch Painters.
• He then undertook a Grand Tour south from 1698 to 1702, visiting Paris, where he studied at the Royal Academy, after he continued to Rome, where arived on November 14 1699 and entered the workshop of the painter Giovanni Maria Morandi.
• In Rome he copied three paintings by Raphael.
• Nicknamed 'the Frisian Raphael’ for his skill in emulating Raphael’s style.
• By 1702, Wigmana had returned to the north and was living in Dokkum and Leeuwarden, where he married in 1707.

• He was the art teacher of the children of Princess Henrietta Amalia Johan Willem Friso and her seven sisters, for seven years.

• Wigmana wrote a book about the art of painting that was published after his death in 1742. 

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