DIES, ALBERT, a landscepo-psiuter and engraver, was born at Hanover in 1755. lie learnt the first drudgery of painting under an obscure artist of Hanover, with whom he spent three years; at the expiration of this period lie visited Diisselderf for a year, whence he went to Rome In 1775, with thirty ducats in his pocket, a donation from the royal treasury. At Rome ho attracted the notice of the celebrated Pinneal and of the Earl of Bristol, who wished to make a second Salvator ROM of Dies, but the painter preferred sketching from nature to copying or to imitating the works of the gloomy Neapolitan : his favourite retreats were about Albano and Tivoli.
Dies remained several years in Rome, but in the meanwhile paid a visit to Naplee. He also published a set of landscape-etchings in Rome, executed in company with some other German artists. He returned with a Roman wife to Germany in 1796, and established himself at Vienna, where he obtained a great reputation, notwith standing a nervous debility which he had brought on by taking whilst in Rome scene solution of sugar of lead in mistake for a medicine which he was using. His right side was so much affected by this
nervous debility, that be was forced to give up entirely the use of his right band, and he painted for some years with his left. He was at length forced to give up painting altogether, and his only remaining resource was poetry, in the composition of which he always indulged.
He was also a musical composer, and he performed with skill upon several instruments. Besides several minor pieces upon the arts, be was the author of a comic didactic poem entitled 'Der Genius der Kunst.' A few of his musical compositions have been published, and ha wrote a biography of Joseph Haydn. He died at Vienna in 1822, after an illness of thirteen years.
(Archly fier Geschiehte, dc., 1825; Nagler, News Allgemcincs Ti iinstler-Lericon.)