A friend and pupil of Jacob Phillip Hackert, the German landscape painter and etcher Balthasar Anton Dunker (sometimes Duncker) studied in Paris with Joseph-Marie Vien and Noël Hallé, and was also much influenced by the German printmaker resident in Paris, Johann Georg Wille.

Dunker began his career as a reproductive etcher, receiving commissions from the print publisher Gabriel Huquier, and his etchings after the paintings in the collection of the Duc de Choiseul, executed between 1770 and 1771, may be regarded as his first significant works.

From 1773, Dunker lived and worked in Bern in Switzerland, producing views of Swiss landscapes, often in collaboration with the Swiss artists Sigmund Freudenberger and Johann Ludwig Ab...