 solomon gessner (1 april 1730 â 2 march 1788) was a swiss painter and poet. his writing suited the taste of his time, though by some more recent standards it is âinsipidly sweet and monotonously melodious.â as a painter, he represented the conventional classical landscape. ==biography== he was born in zurich. with the exception of some time (1749-1750) spent in berlin and hamburg, where he came under the influence of ramler and hagedorn, he passed the whole of his life in his native town, where he carried on the business of a bookseller. the first of his writings that attracted attention was his lied eines schweizers an sein bewaffnetes mÃ¤dchen (song of a swiss to his armed maiden, 1751). then followed daphnis (1754), idyllen (1756 and 1772), inkel and yariko (1756), a version of a story borrowed from the spectatorno. 11, 13 march 1711. and already worked out by gellert and bodmer, and der tod abels (1758), which gessner called âa sort of idyllic prose pastoral.â  encyclopÃ¦dia britannica (1911) puzzles over the reason for gessner's universal popularity, and speculates that maybe it was the taste of the period for the conventional pastoral. britannica notes that his writings are marked by sweetness and melody, qualities which were warmly appreciated by lessing, herder and goethe. the new international encyclopÃ¦dia (1905) finds his writing âinsipidly sweet and monotonously melodious,â and attributes gessner's popularity to the taste of a generation nursed on rousseau. thumb|memorial at platzspitz park in zÃ¼rich collected editions of gessner's works were repeatedly published (2 vols, 1777-1778, finally 2 vols., 1841, both at zÃ¼rich). they were translated into french (3 vols., paris, 1786-1793), and versions of the idyllen appeared in english, dutch, portuguese, spanish, swedish, czech and serbian (by
1730_births 1788_deaths 18th-century_Swiss_painters People_from_the_canton_of_ZA 1/4 rich Swiss_poets