Jakob Becker was a German painter.

Biography

He began his studies with Franz Nikolaus Jung in Worms. When he was 17 years old he started to work as litograph. His first important work was a panorama over the Rhine from Mainz to Cologne. Between 1833 and 1841 Becker studied at the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

, his professors were Johann Wilhelm Schirmer

Johann Wilhelm Schirmer

Johann Wilhelm Schirmer was a German landscape artist from Jülich, within the Prussian Duchy of Jülich.-Biography:...

 and Wilhelm von Schadow. In 1842 he became professor of genre painting

Genre painting

Genre works, also called genre scenes or genre views, are pictorial representations in any of various media that represent scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or...

 and landscape painting at the Städel

Städel

The Städel, officially the Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, is an art museum in Frankfurt am Main, with one of the most important collections in Germany....

 in Frankfurt.

Art

Becker broke with the lofty attitude of much Biblical historical painting in the Städel creating his profane scenes. As the first professor of landscape and genre painting, he sought his subjects in the countryside and was especially interested in the social problems of the peasantry. He used much realistic detail and emotional gesture.

He was also open to French influences. In 1858 he offered to share his studio with Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. The Realist movement bridged the Romantic movement , with the Barbizon School and the Impressionists...

 and - despite having to endure some rudeness from the French artist - Becker accepted some of his stylistic influences.

Jakob Becker has taught successfully at the academy for thirty years. Some of his pupils were to form the Kronberg Painters' Colony one generation later.

One of his best-known works was “Praying Peasant Family.”

Literature

• Wolfgang Metternich: Jakob Becker, der Lehrer der Kronberger Maler (Jakob Becker, teacher of the Kronberg painters). Museumsgesellschaft Kronberg e.V. Frankfurt am Main. Kramer Verlag, 1991
• Wolfgang Metternich: Der Maler Jakob Becker. Ein Frankfurter Lehrer und Wegbereiter im 19. Jahrhundert (The painter Jakob Becker. A teacher of Frankfurt and 19th-century pioneer). Exhibition at the corporate museum of Hoechst AG
  Hoechst
  Hoechst or Höchst may refer to:* Hoechst AG, a former German life-sciences company* Hoechst stain, one of a family of fluorescent DNA-binding compounds* Höchst , Germany* Höchst im Odenwald, Germany* Höchst, Austria...
  
  at Höchster Schloss, 17 March 1985 to 20 April 1985. Hoechst AG, Frankfurt a. M., 1985