Johann Georg Hinz

Johann Georg Hinz is a true northern light. Not much is known about the artist, who was born in Altona. He spent his life in Hamburg, where he developed into Hamburg's first and most famous still life artist of his time. This first earned him citizenship, a right that admitted him to the upper bourgeois class and meant that Johann Georg Hinz had by now come to own a house and money. This was not surprising, since he ran a flourishing workshop business in which he trained Ernst Stuven , among others. Later, he was even allowed to call himself "Freimeister", a title for a master craftsman who was not subject to any guild and could sell his works freely and without paying taxes. So things were apparently going quite well for Johann Georg Hinz. It is said that he acquired his considerable skills from the great masters in the Netherlands, visiting Amsterdam and Antwerp. And indeed, today he is sometimes mentioned in the same breath as Pieter Claesz or Floris van Dyck, coriphae of their time. He was truly not lacking in commissions, among others, the Holsten Brewery and even the Danish royal family were among his clients.