 His mother was Katharina Gsell (1707–1773) whose maternal grandmother was the famous scientific illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717) and whose father was the Swiss Baroque painter Georg Gsell (1673–1740) who had emigrated to Russia in 1716.Katharina married Leonhard Euler on 7 January 1734 and Johann Albert would be the eldest of their 13 children (only 5 of whom survived childhood).In 1754 he became a member of the Berlin Academy.