Ottmar Elliger the Younger

Ottmar Elliger the Younger was born in Hamburg in 1666, the son of the still-life painter Ottmar Elliger the Elder, who gave him his first training. He went on to Amsterdam, studied briefly with the portraitist Michiel van Musscher and then entered the school of Gerard de Lairesse, the leading classicist of the Dutch Golden Age’s last generation, whose manner he made his own.

Elliger painted history and mythology: carefully composed, correctly drawn scenes with an eye for antique costume and ideal architecture, such as ‘The Feast of Cleopatra’ and ‘The Daughter of Herodias Dancing’ (Kassel), ‘The Death of Alexander’ and ‘The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis’ for the Elector of Mainz, and the ‘Allegory’ at Bordeaux. He worked in Amsterdam, for the court at Mainz and finally in Russia for Catherine I, and died in St Petersburg in 1732 (some sources give Amsterdam, 1735). His sons Anthony and Ottmar III were painters too.