Description

Eduard von Gebhardt (1838 Järva-Jaani – 1925 Düsseldorf)

On the Hunt

Material: Oil on paper
Dimension: 13 x 23 cm
Frame: Yes

About the Artist:

Eduard von Gebhardt was a German painter and professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. He is considered an important representative of portrait and history painting of the Düsseldorf School.

Gebhardt was the son of Ferdinand Theodor von Gebhardt (1803-1869), provost and consistory councilor in Reval, and Wilhelmine (1808-1880), called Minna, a native of Glehn. After high school, he attended the Academy of St. Petersburg for three years from the age of 16 and then spent two years partly traveling and partly in Karlsruhe, where he attended the art school. In 1860 he came to Düsseldorf, where he became a student of Wilhelm Sohn and found such encouragement from him that he decided to stay in Düsseldorf and became a close friend and neighbor of Sohn on Rosenstraße. A few houses away, the painters Ernest Preyer, Otto Rethel, Ernst Bosch and Heinrich Mücke had apartments and studios.

Gebhardt became a professor at the Düsseldorf Academy in 1873 and as such trained numerous students. On the occasion of his 70th birthday, the Eduard Schulte Gallery in Berlin organized a large Gebhardt exhibition. Gebhardt received a gold medal at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition in 1918, and in 1925 he was honored by a memorial exhibition. The city of Düsseldorf awarded him honorary citizenship. The grave of the Gebhardts is located on the Million Hill (Field 62) of the North Cemetery in Düsseldorf.

After his death, his house at Rosenstrasse No. 41 became a retirement home for artists of the Verein der Düsseldorfer Künstler (Association of Düsseldorf Artists) for mutual support and assistance, of which he had been a member. In Essen and in Wuppertal a Gebhardtstraße is named after him.

His inclination, already through his upbringing, was directed towards religious themes from the very beginning, but he wanted to give religious painting a national content, in connection with the realistic view of art of his time. He treated the biblical scenes from the point of view of the Dutch and German masters of the 15th and 16th centuries, not only giving the figures the costume and outward appearance of the people of that era, but also characterizing them according to the artistic patterns of the time.

Meyer’s Großes Konversations-Lexikon of 1907 evaluated his work accordingly: “What he thus gained in depth, simplicity and truth of feeling, he gave up in beauty and ideality of representation, which is why his creations have found equally fierce opponents and zealous admirers. However, in more recent times, these opposites have been balanced by the shift in the view of art to realism, and the seriousness of Gebhardt’s depiction is universally recognized.”

Eduard von Gebhardt was among the selection of contemporary artists whom the “Committee for the Procurement and Evaluation of Stollwerck Pictures” proposed to the Cologne chocolate producer Ludwig Stollwerck to commission for designs. At the turn of the century in 1900, Eduard Gebhardt designed the Lukas trademark for all products of Lukas Künstlerfarben of the Künstlerfarben- und Maltuchfabrik Dr. Fr. Schoenfeld & Co. in Düsseldorf.