Johann Caspar Goethe collected paintings by the Frankfurt artists Johann Georg Trautmann, Christian Georg Schütz, Wilhelm Friedrich Hirt, and Justus Juncker. But the artist he admired most was the Darmstadt court painter Johann Conrad Seekatz. All these painters were bound to the tradition of craftsmanship and followed the example of 17th-century Dutch painting. The young Goethe knew the painters and liked watching them work.

When the French lieutenant Thoranc was living in the house, he inspected the painting collection the very first evening by candlelight and was so taken with it that he also commissioned works from the same painters.

As Goethe states in Poetry and Truth, his father commissioned works by

the painter Hirt, whose forte was painting oak and beech woods and other so-called rustic locales, complete with cattle; also Trautmann, who imitated Rembrandt and was so proficient at painting enclosed lights and reflections, as well as impressive fire scenes, [...], also Schütz, who followed Sachtleben´s lead in diligently painting scenes of the Rhine region; and Juncker too, who, in the Dutch manner, very neatly executed flower and fruit pieces, still lifes, and scenes of persons quietly occupied [as well as] Seekatz, a pupil of the Darmstadt court painter Brinckmann.

Goethe: From My Life. Poetry and Truth, part 1 , book 1