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Description

View shows a portrait of Frederick the Great. Drawn by Christian Bernhard Rode, Berlin.

c. 1770

Artist

Rode (1735-1797)

Christian Bernhard Rode (1725 - 1797) was a Berlin history painter in the second half of the 18th century. He was one of the important artists of the Friderizian Rococo and was closely connected to the defining personalities of the Berlin Enlightenment and to their ideas, which he sought to spread through his works. Since 1756, Rode was a member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts. In 1783 he was appointed successor to Le Sueur as director of the academy. His long-time friend Daniel Chodowiecki, also an academician, had strongly supported the appointment. He and his colleagues at the academy hoped that this change would revitalize the institution, which had lost importance in the previous decades - the frugal "soldier king" Friedrich Wilhelm I had little interest in art and culture, his successor Friedrich II. ( Frederick the Great) was based almost exclusively on French models. Despite repeated submissions to the king in an attempt to win him over for a reorganization of the academy, Rode was unable to achieve anything essential. Finally Chodowiecki himself took on important positions at the academy. He was instrumental in their reform of 1790, now under the rule of Friedrich Wilhelm II. In 1797, after Rode's death, he succeeded him as director.