Quick Facts
Biography
Georg Gsell (Russian: Георг Гзель; 28 January 1673 – 22 November 1740) was a Swiss Baroque painter, art consultant and art dealer.
Gsell was born in St. Gallen where he married his first wife in 1697, Marie Gertrud von Loen of Frankfurt am Main. They moved to Amsterdam in 1704 where their fifth daughter Katharina was born in 1707. His wife died and he remarried Anna Horstmans, but divorced her in 1715, when he married a third time to Dorothea Maria Merian, the daughter of Maria Sibylla Merian. The couple was recruited by Peter the Great in 1716 and went to Russia, where he became first curator of the Imperial art gallery founded in 1720. His wife, Maria-Dorothea, became the curator of the Kunstkamera. Their daughter Katharina married mathematician Leonhard Euler in 1733.
Gsell died, aged 67, in St. Petersburg and his wife survived him by three years. He is known for his catalog of the Kunstkamera in manuscript form, that has recently been rediscovered.
Literature
- Otto Gsell: Georg Gsell (1673–1749), Hofmaler Peters des Grossen (Courtpainter of Peter the Great)