Eduard Hildebrandt
Eduard Hildebrandt (9 September 1818 in
Biography
He served as apprentice to his father, a house-painter at Danzig. He was not twenty when he moved to Berlin, where he was taken in hand by
Accident made him acquainted with masterpieces of French art displayed at the Berlin Academy, and these awakened his curiosity and envy. He went to Paris, where, about 1842, he entered the atelier of Isabey and became the companion of Lepoittevin. In a short time he sent home pictures which might have been taken for copies from these artists. Gradually he mastered the mysteries of touch and the secrets of effect in which the French at this period excelled.[1]
He also acquired the necessary skill in painting figures, and returned to Germany, skilled in the rendering of many kinds of landscape forms. His pictures of French street life, done about 1843, while impressed with the stamp of the Paris school, reveal a spirit eager for novelty, quick at grasping, equally quick at rendering, momentary changes of tone and atmosphere.[1]
After 1843 Hildebrandt, under the influence of Humboldt, extended his travels, and in 1864-1865 he went round the world. Whilst his experience became enlarged his powers of concentration broke down. He lost the taste for detail in seeking for scenic breadth, and a fatal facility of hand diminished the value of his works for all those who look for composition and harmony of hue as necessary concomitants of tone and touch.[1]
In oil he gradually produced less, in water colours more, than at first, and his fame must rest on the sketches which he made in the latter form, many of them represented by
References
- ^ a b c d e public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Hildebrandt, Eduard". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 461. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
External links
Media related to Eduard Hildebrandt at Wikimedia Commons