# Portrait of the Artist and His Family [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [TISCHBEIN, Johann Friedrich August]() - Date: 1751-1800 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 113 x 82 cm ## Commentary Tischbein used the group of his wife and two daughters from an earlier work, but extended the composition to include his own self-portrait. In the nineteenth century, under the instructions of Tischbein's youngest daughter Betty \(1787-1867\), seen here as a child sitting on her mother's lap, his self-portrait was painted over and two sides of the canvas cut down in order to reconfigure the composition with the mother and daughters at centre. This 'reworking' was only discovered in 1975 during the restoration of the work when the green curtain painted over Tischbein was removed and his likeness once again revealed. The family portrait was commissioned in 1796 by Prince Johann Georg \(1748-1811\), brother of the ruling Duke Leopold III Friedrich Franz von Anhalt-Dessau \(1740-1817\). ## Related artworks - [Nicolas Châtelain in the Garten]() - [Portrait of Queen Luise of Prussia]() - [Portrait of Sara Anna von Miltitz]() - [Portrait of the Saltykov Family]() - [The Artist's Daughters as Personifications of Painting and Music]() - [The Queen of Sheba Kneeling before King Solomon]() - [William V, Prince of Orange-Nassau]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()