John Christian Rauschner

John Christian Rauschner (born 1760) was a German artist who specialized in portraits made of wax.[1] He worked for some time in the United States, travelling to Boston,[2][3] New York City,[4] Philadelphia[5][6] and elsewhere.[7] Examples of Rauschner's artwork are in the Albany Institute of History & Art;[8] American Antiquarian Society;[9] Bostonian Society; Fruitlands Museum;[10] Historic New England; Massachusetts Historical Society; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston;[11] New York Historical Society;[12] Peabody Essex Museum;[13][14] Philadelphia Museum of Art; West Point Museum; the White House, Washington DC; and Winterthur Museum.[15]

Images

Portraits by Rauschner

• 
  Ephraim Ward
• 
  James Hoban
• 
  Asa Eaton
• 
  Lucy Lord Dutch
• 
  Oliver Holden

References

1. His name appears in contemporary and later sources in variety of spellings, presumably all referring to the same artist: John Christian Rauchner, Johann Christian Rauschner, John C. Rauschner, J.C. Rauschner; John Christopher Rauschner, Johann Christoph Rauschner.
2. "John C. Rauschner, artist in wax, 2 Winter Street." Boston Directory. 1807, 1810
3. His son, portrait artist Henry Rauschner, had a "shop" in Boston ca.1809-1810. Henry died in 1812 while serving in the U.S. Army in South Carolina. cf. "Henry Rauschner, artist in wax, 3 Winter Street;" Boston Directory 1809. Independent Chronicle (Boston) 03-12-1810. "Deaths," The Pilot (Boston), Nov. 27, 1812
4. "Nature imitated. John Christopher Rauschner, artist. Member of the Imperial Academy of Sculpture at Vienna." Commercial Advertiser (NY), 01-02-1799
5. Philadelphia Directory. 1811
6. J. Thomas Scharf (1884), History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, Philadelphia, Pa: L. H. Everts & Co., OL 13503130M
7. Mary Caroline Crawford (1914), Social life in old New England, Boston: Little, Brown, and company, OCLC 475233, OL 6570572M
8. Smithsonian
9. American Antiquarian Society
10. Fruitlands Museum
11. MFA Boston
12. NY Historical Society Archived 2012-01-12 at the Wayback Machine
13. Ethel Stanwood Bolton (1915), Wax portraits and silhouettes, Boston: Massachusetts Society of the Colonial Dames of America, OL 7029721M
14. William Dunlap (1918), History of the rise and progress of the arts of design in the United States (A history of the rise and progress of the arts of design in the United States ed.), Boston: C.E. Goodspeed & Co., OCLC 3449403, OL 7082485M
15. Anita Schorsch. "A Key to the Kingdom: The Iconography of a Mourning Picture." Winterthur Portfolio, Spring, 1979, vol.14, no.1

Further reading

• The Spectator (NY); Date: 12-14-1803. [Anecdote about Mr. Rauschner and his waxworks].
• Ethel Stanwood Bolton, American Wax Portraits, 3rd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1929)
• "Wax profiles of Abraham Varick and others by J.C. Rauschner." Antiques, Vol. 30, September 1936, pp. 100–102.
• H.E. Keyes. "More Waxes by Rauschner." Antiques, Vol. 31, April 1937, pp. 186–187.