Christoph Nathe
German painter (1753–1806)
Christoph Nathe (3 January 1753, Nieder-Bielau - 10 December 1806, Schadewalde) was a German miniaturist, watercolorist and etcher.
Life and work
He was born to a family of farmers. After completing his secondary education, he took his first drawing lessons from Johann Gottfried Schultz. His work was noticed by the naturalist, Adolf Traugott von Gersdorff, who became his patron. When Gersdorff went to Leipzig, In 1774, he made it possible for Nathe to study at the Academy of Fine Arts with Adam Friedrich Oeser. He also received professional advice from Johann Friedrich Bause, a portrait engraver.
From 1783 to 1784, he accompanied the ornithologist, Karl Andreas von Meyer zu Knonow (1744-1797), a relative of Gersdorff's, on an extensive tour of Switzerland, which he later described as the high point of his life. The drawings he created while there were in great demand in Leipzig.
Despite this, he felt that his financial situation was insecure so, in 1787, he left Leipzig to accept the position of Director at the Görlitz drawing school, and taught at the local gymnasium. He still travelled frequently, to acquire material for his drawings.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1085578. VIAF identifies the subject as 3233763. The Library of Congress control number is no2008067009. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1753, 1806, 1774 and 1783.
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This entry incorporates text from “Christoph Nathe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.