The Jewish Family Sitting Around the Stove
Medium
Etching; first state
Dimensions
plate: 6 3/4 x 8 7/8 in. sheet: 8 x 10 1/8 in.
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1949
Accession Number
49.21.30
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the cozy etching *The Jewish Family Sitting Around the Stove* (1817), Johann Christoph Erhard captures a tender domestic moment from early 19th-century Germany. This first-state proof, measuring 6 3/4 x 8 7/8 inches on the plate, depicts a multi-generational Jewish family gathered intimately around a stove in a modest interior. Women, men, girls, and even a cat huddle together, evoking warmth and everyday resilience amid the post-Napoleonic era's social upheavals. Erhard, a skilled Nuremberg engraver known for his precise genre scenes, employs etching—a technique where acid bites into a me...
About the Artist
Johann Christoph Erhard · 1795–1822
Johann Christoph Erhard (1795–1822) was a German painter and etcher of the Romantic era whose sensitive landscape studies and skillful prints earned him a growing reputation before his tragically early death at twenty-six. Born in Nuremberg, he studied at the Nuremberg Academy and later in Munich, where he was influenced by the Romantic landscape tradition and the revival of interest in the art of...