Gerard Wigmana (27 September 1673, in

Workum Workum () is a city located in the municipality of Súdwest-Fryslân in Friesland, Netherlands. It received city rights in 1399 and is one of the eleven cities of Friesland. It had a population of 4,435 in January 2017.Amsterdam), was an 18th-century painter from the Northern Netherlands.

Biography

Gerard Wigmana - painting of a family meal in Dokkum

In 1697 he painted a curious group portrait of a family dinner, with the title ''Mayor Saco van Aitzema of Dokkum and his wife offer Tsar

Peter the Great Peter I ( – ), most commonly known as Peter the Great,) or Pyotr Alekséyevich ( rus, Пётр Алексе́евич, p=ˈpʲɵtr ɐlʲɪˈksʲejɪvʲɪtɕ, , group=pron was a Russian monarch who ruled the Tsardom of Russia from t ...

a meal in Amsterdam''.Dokkum blog
/ref> He travelled to Rome after that, because according to Houbraken, Wigmana met with the painter

Daniel Seiter Daniel Seiter, Saiter, or Seyter (c.1642/1647–1705) was a Vienna, Viennese-born painter of the Baroque, who trained and worked in Italy. Biography According to Houbraken, Seiter was born on the border of Switzerland and brought up in Vien ...

in Rome in 1699.Daniel Syder biography
in ''De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen'' (1718) by

Arnold Houbraken Arnold Houbraken (28 March 1660 – 14 October 1719) was a Dutch painter and writer from Dordrecht, now remembered mainly as a biographer of Dutch Golden Age painters. Life Houbraken was sent first to learn ''threadtwisting'' (Twyndraat) fr ...

, courtesy of the Digital library for Dutch literature Houbraken mentioned him again in his biographical sketch of Pieter van Mierevelt, because Wigmana owned one of his paintings. Houbraken intended to write a biographical sketch of Wigmana in his birth year of 1673, but never got that far (he died before publication of Volume III, which ended with birth year 1659). According to the RKD he was a pupil of Jelle Sibrands and travelled to Rome where he received the nickname ''Friese Raphael''.Gerard Wigmana
in the RKD According to

Johan van Gool Johan, or Jan van Gool (1685–1763), was a Dutch painter and writer from The Hague, now remembered mainly as a biographer of artists from the Dutch Golden Age. Life Jan van Gool was a pupil of Simon van der Does and Mattheus Terwesten.

, who called him a ''narcissus'' in his biographical sketch of him, Wigmana was in Rome in 1700, but Van Gool did not believe that he got his nickname from joining the

Bentvueghels The Bentvueghels (Dutch for "Birds of a Feather") were a society of mostly Dutch and Flemish artists active in Rome from about 1620 to 1720. They are also known as the Schildersbent ("painters' clique"). Activities The members, which included ...

, but rather that Wigmana received his nickname of the ''Frisian Raphael'' because he made so many copies of the works of Raphael.Gerard Wigmana Biography, page 278
in ''Nieuwe Schouburg'' (with painter index), (1750) by Jan van Gool, in the ''Institute of Dutch History'' Wigmana wrote a book about the art of painting that was published after his death in 1742, and which contained his autobiography with an engraving by Bernard Picart after a self-portrait.

References

Gerard Wigmana
on

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* ''Korte schets of denkbeeld, om tot een groote volmaaktheid in de schilderkonst te geraken, opgeteld door Gerardus Wigmana, in zijn leven berucht schilder, uit zijn eigen handschrift te zamen gesteld'', by Gerardus Wigmana, Amsterdam, 1742 {{DEFAULTSORT:Wigmana, Gerard 1673 births 1741 deaths 18th-century Dutch painters 18th-century Dutch male artists Dutch male painters Dutch art historians People from Nijefurd