| Biographical Annotation |
Rudolph Ackermann was born near Leipzig, Saxony, and educated at the Latin school in Stollberg. At age fifteen, he was apprenticed to his brother, Friedrich, who was a saddler. During this time, he learned to draw and engrave, leaving his apprenticeship in 1782 to train as a carriage designer. He was employed in Paris and Brussels, but soon moved to England, where he received several illustrious commissions for carriage designs. He married Martha Massey in 1792, and opened a drawing school on the Strand in 1795, which he ran for ten years. At the end of the century, he began manufacturing watercolour paints, and in 1801, patented a method for water-proofing paper and cloth. A handful of publications in 1808-9 secured his reputation as a producer of fine colour plate books, and he continued to publish illustrated books for the next two decades. He also produced over 100 titles in Spanish, which he exported to the colonies in South America. Ackermann's publishing firm folded in 1855, twenty years after his death, but the print business he had first established for his eldest son continued under his name until 1992, when it merged with another fine art dealer, becoming Arthur Ackermann and Peter Johnson Ltd. [info from ODNB] |