(Ovelgoenne circa 1600 - after 1678 Oldenburg)
The Encounter of Jacob and Rachel,
signed with a monogram and dated lower right: CHPW/Oldenb:/fec:/1652,
oil on panel, 47 x 62.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, USA

Wolfgang Heimbach was a deaf painter who was highly regarded by his contemporaries for his versatility – social depictions, genre, still life, portraiture, official representation, landscape – which gave him well-endowed commissions. His birthplace and his affliction earned him the nickname ‘The deaf painter of Ovelgönne’.

Heimbach’s earliest known painting, The Wedding (dated 1636 Ovelgönne and 1637 Bremen), reveals the painter’s inspirations for his art: studying in the Netherlands, probably in Amsterdam, just before 1635 gave him lifelong ideas. Especially his dependence on the Amsterdam painters Anthoni Palamedesz. and Willem Cornelisz. Duyster is evident. Furthermore, Heimbach’s work demonstrates his knowledge of the Italians Saraceni and Fetti, probably also of Caravaggio and his successors like Honthorst, particularly in genre scenes, which originated in Rome in the early 1640s. In 1648 Heimbach was in the service of Ferdinand II, Grand Duke of Tuscany. From that point on, the painter’s portraiture began to follow Italian ideas - see for example the Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1645, Copenhagen). In 1652 Heimbach returned to Germany via Prague and Brussels. During the next years the artist served as a court painter to Count Günther of Oldenburg and King Frederick III of Denmark in Copenhagen. From 1665 onwards Heimbach is recorded as being back in the services of Oldenburg, from which period dates one of his best paintings, The Sick Man (1669, Kunsthalle Hamburg). Since 1670 Heimbach was the court painter to Prince Bishop Christoph Bernhard von Galen in Münster.