Justus Junker

Mainz -1703 - 1767 - Frankfurt / Main

"Country Scenes - a Pair,  each with Peasants and a Still Life of Cooking Vessels"

Oil on Panel, each 33 x 27 cm (13¼ x 10N inches)

One signed bottom left: Junker f. 1765

Biographical Note:

Justus Junker came young to Frankfurt and learned to paint there.  He first specialised in painting interiors, often with alchemists, or kitchens, studios and taverns; he sometimes included portraits of his patrons in these scenes.  Later he widened his repertoire to include Still Life paintings of flowers,  fruit and various earthenware or copper vessels all under the influence of the Dutch Masters of the previous century.

Junker spent some time in London and then after 1726 he settled permanently in Frankfurt. He seems to have been a very intelligent and cultivated man and thus became a friend of the young Goethe who charmingly describes the build up and creation of a painting and how he brought  flowers and insects to the painter, and even on one occasion a mouse.  And he describes how, fastidious as he was,  the painting nevertheless did not please Junker, so he started another with the same items, but with bolder contrasts and a more forceful composition.

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