Artist in Residence at the Louis C. Jacob: Art on the Elbchaussee

The Louis C. Jacob on Hamburg’s Elbchaussee is a hotel with a long history, a terrace above the river Elbe and a connection to art that reaches back more than a century. Since 2025 that connection has had a new chapter: the Hamburg painter Juliane Golbs is the house’s artist in residence.

A house that began as a wine tavern in 1791

The story of the house begins with an escape. Daniel Louis Jaques, a landscape gardener, left France during the years of the Revolution and arrived in Nienstedten on the Elbe. He married the widow of the confectioner Burmester, who had carried on her late husband’s business, and took the name Jacob. On 1 July 1791 he opened a wine tavern by the river. In 1802 he was granted a licence for a restaurant.

The house stayed in the family for four generations. Carl Louis Jacob took over in 1826, Louis Carl Jacob in 1866, Heinrich Louis Jacob in 1895. Only in 1922, after the death of Louis Heinrich Jacob, did it pass to the restaurateur Albert Nibbes. Further leaseholders followed until, in 1993, the Rahe family acquired the hotel and restored it over several years. In the process a historic ice cellar and hidden wall paintings came to light. The reopening was celebrated in 1996.

In between lie many alterations that are barely visible today. The ice cellar, where winter ice was once stored for the summer months, was built in 1870. Around the same time the first guest rooms were added, and a ballroom replaced the stables. In 1902, the very year Liebermann painted here, the building was gutted and renewed. After the Second World War the hotel reopened in 1949. On 3 April 1971, after another refurbishment, it reopened once more, with a wood-panelled restaurant and 350 seats instead of the previous 260.

Walking through the corridors today, you move through several eras at once: the inn of the late eighteenth century, the excursion destination of the imperial era, the post-war hotel and the restored house of the Rahe family. The ice cellar and the ballroom survive to this day and were opened for guided tours during the 2026 anniversary.

Since 22 July 2025 the Louis C. Jacob has been part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection. In 2026 it celebrated its 235th anniversary.

The linden terrace

Daniel Louis Jacob is said to have laid out the garden above the Elbe as early as 1791, and with it the linden terrace. Sitting there today, you look through clipped lindens onto the river and the ships heading into or out of Hamburg. Since 1956 the building and its terrace have been a listed monument.

The terrace has not come through the years entirely unchanged. In 1970 seven lindens were felled for a new restaurant building. The layout itself survived, and with it the view that made the house famous.

Max Liebermann on the Elbe

In 1902 Max Liebermann stayed at the house for several weeks and painted the linden terrace. It is one of the best-known pictures of German Impressionism from Hamburg: guests at tables laid in white, sunlight falling in patches through the leaves, the Elbe beyond. The painting “The Terrace of the Restaurant Jacob in Nienstedten on the Elbe” belongs to the collection of the Hamburger Kunsthalle. According to the hotel, a further picture by Liebermann from this stay, a view of the Elbe, hangs in the house itself; the Rahe family acquired it in 1995.

Liebermann did not paint the Elbe as a landscape but the life on the terrace and, above all, the light. The patches on tablecloths and gravel are the real subject of the picture. This is where the bridge to the present lies. Juliane Golbs, too, is drawn to the light on the Elbe, which changes constantly and makes colours appear different with every hour.

At the anniversary celebration in July 2026, Dr Markus Bertsch, curator at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, spoke at the hotel about Liebermann’s relationship with Hamburg and with the Jacob. For the house, the painter’s legacy is not a quotation from the past but part of its identity.

What artist in residence means here

On 29 September 2025 the Louis C. Jacob announced a long-term collaboration with Juliane Golbs. According to the announcement, the house intends to sharpen its artistic profile and become a “place of lived art”. Juliane Golbs works at the hotel regularly. She paints, sketches and observes. The house becomes studio, motif and exhibition space at once.

Among the plans:

• exhibitions of the artist’s work at the hotel,
• painting classes for guests and art lovers,
• an art and culinary gala in the anniversary year 2026,
• originals, art prints and postcards shown and offered at the hotel,
• and, in the longer term, a joint book that brings together the artist’s paintings and sketches with the history of the house.

According to the press release, partnerships with the Hamburger Kunsthalle and with Montblanc were also under discussion.

Hotel director Judith Fuchs-Eckhoff describes the collaboration not as a time-limited project but as a dialogue between equals that is only just beginning. Art in the house is meant not simply to hang on the wall but to become a visible, living part of everyday life.

The artist and the place

For Juliane Golbs the place has a personal meaning. She has said that on her first visit she felt a part of her path was beginning here. For her, the terrace connects past and present, and she deliberately takes up the artistic heritage of the house. The place, she says, “positively calls for art”.

That is more than a pleasant turn of phrase. Juliane Golbs was born in Schwerin and has lived in Hamburg since she was eighteen. The Elbe is not a backdrop for her but part of daily life. That a Hamburger by choice now works on the very spot where Liebermann captured Hamburg’s light more than a hundred years ago gives the connection a logic of its own.

Her painting, often finished with 24-carat gold leaf, suits this light. On the terrace, when the sun stands low over the river, you can see why gold seems so natural in her pictures. It takes in the light of its surroundings and returns it transformed. How the technique works is explained in the article Gold leaf in painting.

Sketch and picture

Anyone who meets Juliane Golbs at the Jacob will often find her not before a large canvas but with a sketchbook and a watercolour box. That has to do with the place. A hotel is not a studio with room for large formats and paint buckets. It is a place for observation: guests arriving, waiters laying tables, ships on the Elbe, lindens through the changing seasons.

Such observations become material. Some of it remains a sketch; some later finds its way into a painting in the studio. The planned joint book is meant to show exactly this layer: paintings and sketches alongside the history of the house. The result is a kind of chronicle in pictures that takes up Liebermann’s stay without copying it.

Art as part of hospitality

Hotels have always collected art. What is new is the idea of an artist working in the house and letting guests take part in how a picture comes into being. Whoever stays at the Louis C. Jacob or lunches on the terrace can watch a painting develop. In the painting classes you can try it yourself.

For Juliane Golbs this kind of dialogue is familiar. Whether with WERNS in Venice, with Roborock at IFA or with Maison Laurette in Deauville, her art seeks exchange with houses that embody quality. At the Louis C. Jacob that exchange is built to last, not confined to a fair or a single evening. That is what makes it special. All partnerships are presented on the Dialogues page.

A house full of stories

The Louis C. Jacob has seen many guests. Robert Redford married here in 2009, and in October 2023 the Franco-German Council of Ministers met in the house. Such moments belong to the history of the hotel, just like the guests Liebermann recorded on his canvas in 1902 without our knowing their names.

The anniversary itself was devoted to culture. At the celebration on 5 July 2026 the house opened its historic rooms, one part of the programme introduced the founder Daniel Louis Jacob, and an auction in support of the concert series of the Liedstadtfestival took place on the linden terrace. Culture here is not an accessory to fine dining; it has long been part of how the house sees itself.

Art gives a house like this an additional narrative layer. It holds on to what would otherwise pass: the light of a particular afternoon, a mood on the terrace, a gesture. Liebermann did this in 1902. Juliane Golbs continues it with her own means: colour, line and gold.

Visit and experience

If you would like to see Juliane Golbs’s work in an exceptional setting, the Louis C. Jacob is one of the most beautiful places to do so. Dates for exhibitions and painting classes are announced by the hotel and the artist. More about art and studios in the city can be found in the article Painters in Hamburg. For a private appointment at the studio, the contact form is open.