Portrait stipple engraving by Carl Traugott Riedel (1769-1832)

Zwickau: Gebr. Schumann, 1810. 182 x 114 mm. plus wide margins. On wove paper with watermark "M & I. A. Huber." The subject is depicted head and shoulders, facing slightly left, and looking directly at the viewer. Schicht was a German conductor, keyboard player and composer. "He was brought up by his uncle at Zittau, where he was first taught to play keyboard instruments by the organist Johann Trier. From 1776, when he went to Leipzig University to study law, he played in the concerts at the inn ‘Zu den drei Schwänen’ (the ‘Grosses Concert’) under the direction of Hiller. Abandoning the law, he also played under Hiller in the Musikübende Gesellschaft and from 1781 played the violin in the Gewandhaus concerts. In 1785 he succeeded Hiller as musical director of the Gewandhaus concerts and subsequently of the Neukirche. He founded the Leipzig Singakademie in 1802, directed it until 1807 and became the university’s musical director in 1808. In 1810 he succeeded August Müller as Kantor of the Thomasschule in Leipzig, where he attained a high standard of performance." Gaynor G. Jones in Grove Music Online

Riedel engraved a number of fine portraits of musicians including a well known early depiction of Beethoven by Louis Letronne published in 1815.