Description

Philipp Andreas Kilian (1714 -1759) was a member of a prominent Augsburg-based family of copper engravers and artists. He was a son of the artist Georg Kilian (1683–1745) and a great-grandson of Wolfgang Kilian (1581–1663), one of the most prolific German engravers of the early 17th century, known for his numberless portraits of nobility, book illustrations and title pages.

Philipp Andreas’s first wife was Susanna Sybilla Engelbrecht († 1747), the daughter of a famous Augsburg publisher Martin Engelbrecht (1684-1756). Their son Georg Martin Kilian (1739–1760) was also active as an engraver.

He was an imperial engraver of Poland and Electorate of Saxony. He produced numberless Baroque engravings, several in larger formats. His motifs included portraits, decorative and historical scenes.

This portrait was engraved in the technique of mezzotint by Philipp Andreas’s brother Georg Christoph Kilian (1709–1781) in 1769 and was based on a draft by a German painter Gottfried Eichler the Elder (1677-1759), made in 1743, showing the artist at the age of 29 years.