Anna Dorothea Therbusch was a prominent Rococo painter born in the Kingdom of Prussia. About 200 of her works survive, and she painted at least eighty-five verified portraits.
Anna Dorothea married Berlin innkeeper Ernst Friedrich Therbusch in 1742 and gave up painting until around 1760 in order to help her husband in the restaurant. Not until her spousal obligations were discharged, as a "short-sighted, middle-aged woman", did she return to her art career in 1760.
Notable works
The Swing and Game of Shuttlecock are a pair of conversation pieces that defined her first period of work. Game of Shuttlecock was signed and dated in 1741. These two works were modeled off of Jean-Antoine Watteau and similar to those of Nicolas Lancret.
Therbusch's first recorded return to painting was in 1761 in the Stuttgart court of Duke Karl Eugen. She completed eighteen paintings in the shortest time for the castle gallery. In 1762 she became an honorary member of the Stuttgart Academy of the Arts and worked in Stuttgart and Mannheim. In 1765 she went to Paris. The French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture displayed her work first, proudly supporting a female artist. Denis Diderot, the controversial and outspoken art critic and philosopher, was sympathetic to her, even to the point of posing naked for her. Anna Dorothea was elected as a member of the Académie Royale in 1767, lived with Diderot and met famous artists, and even painted Philipp Hackert but she remained unsuccessful in Paris. That time is, however, seen as her most creative.
Return to Prussia
Paris was, and is, an expensive city and Anna Dorothea had financial difficulties. From November 1768 until early 1769, the heavily indebted painter returned to Berlin, via Brussels and the Netherlands, and became the primary painter in Prussia, where she was held in high esteem. She was portrait painter to Frederick II of Prussia, whose newly built palace of Sanssouci she decorated with mythological scenes. She also painted portraits of eight Prussian royals for Catherine II of Russia. Though Anna Dorothea never went to Russia, Russian collectors also appreciated her work. She also met the group of artists surrounding Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. She died in Berlin on 9 November 1782 at the age of 61, and was buried at Dorotheenstadt cemetery, whose pertaining church was destroyed in World War II. Her tomb remains intact. Her relationship with Diderot inspired Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt to write his play Der Freigeist, also known as Der Libertin.
