Benjamin Calau

Benjamin Calau (1724–1785) was a German portrait painter, who used an encaustic technique.

Life

Calau was born at Friedrichstadt in Holstein in 1724, He moved to Leipzig in 1752, and was appointed court painter there four years later.

He painted some portraits for Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim's "Temple of Friendship", a collection of paintings of the poet's friends (totalling more than 120 by the time of his death) that he kept in two rooms in his home in Halberstadt.

In 1771 he went to Berlin, where the king awarded him the exclusive right to make and sell the Punic wax. It was also there that he assisted the scientist Johann Heinrich Lambert with the creation of his Farbenpyramide (colour pyramid), conceived as a practical investigation of the theoretical writings on colour of Tobias Mayer. Lambert published the results of his researches in 1772 as Beschreibung einer mit dem Calauischen Wachse ausgemalten Farbenpyramide ("Description of a colour pyramid painted with Calau's wax").

He died in Berlin in 1785.