Per Krafft the Elder

Per Krafft the Elder (16 January 1724, Arboga - 7 November 1793, ) was a Swedish portraitist. He was the father of the artists Per Krafft the Younger and Wilhelmina Krafft.

Per Krafft studied in Uppsala, where he in 1736 became interested in the arts. From 1739 he was for several years a student of portrait painter Johan Henrik Scheffel in Stockholm . His self-portrait from 1745 and a portrait of his sister Anna Lisa (married Askblom ) shows clear influences from Scheffel. In 1745 Krafft went to Copenhagen, where he came under Carl Gustaf Pilo's influence, as seen in the 1748 autographed portraits of Anna Bohr and a Miss Leijonhufvud as a shepherdess. In 1749, Per Krafft went to Skåne and painted Governor Wilhelm Lindenstedts portrait in baroque style. Krafft had a patron in Denmark then Finance Minister Otto Thott, to whom he copied several hundred family portraits at various Danish castle, which was collected in Gavnø. In 1752 Krafft painted the Count and Countess Thotts and their daughter's portrait, later kept on in Gavnø and Frederiksborg Castle.

In 1755 he traveled to Paris, where he became a student of Chardin. He later became a student of Alexander Roslin, a professor at Bayreuth and court painter to Stanisław August Poniatowski of Poland. Krafft painted in Paris included Count Nils Nilsson Bonde and some genre portraits, for example a Young Girl who Plays Lira (1758). In such images, he followed Jean-Baptiste Greuze's style, which was in vogue at the time. In 1762 Krafft was appointed as professor at the Margrave of Bayreuth's Academy of Art. Here he performed a brilliant portrait of the Duchess of Württemberg Margravine Elisabeth Fredericka Sophie of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, and a portrait of the Margravine's friend, the ambassador, Count Fr. Ellrodt.

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