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Kopaneva N. Drawings by the Artist J. C. Berkhan in Description of All Peoples Inhabiting the Russian State… by J. G. Georgi

N. Kopaneva
Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of the RAS
St. Petersburg, Russia
ORCID: 0009-0001-1131-0763
E-mail: kopaneva@kunstkamera.ru

 

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ABSTRACT. The attribution of the original drawings used to produce the engravings for J. G. Georgi’s Description of All Peoples Inhabiting the Russian State... is a central task in the study of this seminal work of ethnographic scholarship. Identifying the sources of the engravings is essential not merely for recovering the artist’s name, but also for establishing the place and date of the drawings’ creation, thereby enabling verification of both the engravings and the ethnographic descriptions they illustrate. The discovery of eight drawings by Johan Christian Berkhan (1709–1751), an artist accompanying the Second Kamchatka Expedition, makes it possible to attribute these works as the originals used by the engraver Christian Roth in preparing the illustrations for Georgi’s book and for the publication Discovering Russia. The drawings were executed in 1734 during the journey to Tobolsk via Kazan, commissioned by G. F. Müller, and sent to St. Petersburg in the same year. These works represent the earliest known ethnographic drawings produced by participants in the Second Kamchatka Expedition. A comparison between the original drawings and the resulting engravings also allows for an analysis of the alterations introduced by the engraver, the degree of conventionalization inherent in the engraving process, and the extent to which the ethnographic principles articulated by G. F. Müller were preserved, namely, the depiction of representatives of different peoples according to their actual facial features, attire (both everyday and festive), and culturally appropriate poses or activities.

 

KEYWORDS: ethnographic drawings, engravings, Second Kamchatka Expedition, J. G. Georgi, J. C. Berkhan, G. F. Müller, C. M. Roth

 

DOI 10.31250/2618-8600-2026-1(31)-130-151
UDC 069.8:39

 

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