Anton Graff was an eminent Swiss portrait artist. Among his famous subjects were Friedrich Schiller, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Heinrich von Kleist, Frederick the Great, Friederike Sophie Seyler, Johann Gottfried Herder, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Moses Mendelssohn and Christian Felix Weiße. His pupils included Emma Körner, Philipp Otto Runge and Karl Ludwig Kaaz.
With the arrival of this self-portrait (1765) on 16 January 1766, in Dresden, Graff's career as one of the most famous portrait artists of the Neoclassicism began
Frederick the Great, King of Prussia (1781). This portrait is regarded as Anton Graff's masterpiece. Contemporaries claimed it was the best and most accurate portrait of Frederick the Great. It is the most famous, most copied and most reproduced portrait of the King of Prussia.
Elisabeth Sulzer, née Reinhart (1765/66). Elisabeth Sulzer and Oskar Reinhart have common ancestors. Oskar Reinhart was a patron of the arts and an art collector. Among others he collected paintings by Anton Graff. Part of his vast collection is at the Museum Oskar Reinhart in Winterthur.
Portrait of the daughters of Johann Julius von Vieth und Golssenau (1713–1784) and his wife Johanna Juliane, née Krieg von Bellicken (painted around 1775). Von Vieth und Golssenau was a nobleman at the princely court of Saxony. This painting was sold at Christie's in London on 11 December 2002 as lot 75 in the auction 6652 "Old Master Pictures" for £111,150.
Friederike Sophie Seyler was a German actress, playwright and librettist. Alongside Friederike Caroline Neuber, she was widely considered Germany's greatest actress of the 18th century; Gotthold Ephraim Lessing described her in his Hamburg Dramaturgy as "incontestably one of the best actresses that German theatre has ever seen."
Friederike Sophie Seyler by Anton Graff, Kunsthalle Hamburg
