BENDEMANN, EDUARD JULIUS FRIEDRICH

BENDEMANN, EDUARD JULIUS FRIEDRICH (1811–1889), German painter. Born in Berlin as the youngest child of Anton Bendemann and Fanny, née von Halle, a burgeois Jewish family who later converted to Protestantism, Bendemann revealed his talent early in a portrait he painted of his   grandmother before he was 20. After having studied under Johann Gottfried von Schadow, he followed the son of Johann Gottfried, Wilhelm von Schadow, to Duesseldorf in 1827 and enrolled in the Duesseldorf School of Painting, whose head was Wilhelm Schadow. In 1830 he accompanied Schadow to Italy, where for one year he devoted himself exclusively to the study of Raphael, Michelangelo and the Nazarenes. There he apparently formed his taste for painting monumental historical scenes in a classicist style. Bendemann produced his best-known paintings between 1831 and 1835, among them The Exiles of Babylon (1832), Two Girls at the Well (1833), Jeremiah at the Destruction of Jerusalem (1836) and Die Kuenste am Brunnen der Poesie (1837). In 1835 Bendemann married Schadow's sister Lida. He was appointed professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Dresden in 1838 and executed a number of murals for the royal palace there. In the revolution of 1848 he was an active member of pro-revolutionary leagues. In 1859 he succeeded his former teacher and brother-in-law as director of the Academy in Duesseldorf, but resigned in 1867 due to ill health. He was commissioned to paint portraits of well-known figures, and a large number of his works are exhibited in Berlin museums. In addition, his illustrations in the neo-classical style appear in such literary works as the Nibelungenlied (published 1840 in Leipzig) and Lessing's Nathan the Wise. His son RUDOLF (1851–1884) was also a well-known painter. His elder son FELIX (1848–1915) was an admiral and chief of Naval Staff. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Roth, Art, 544; J. Schrattenholz, Eduard Bendemann (Ger., 1891). ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: W. Aschenborn, Eduard Bendemann (1811–1885). Das Direktorat an der Düsseldorfer Kunstakademie 1859–67 (1998); L. von Donop (ed.): Ausstellung der Werke von Eduard Bendemann in der Koeniglichen Nationalgalerie (1890); W. von Kalnein (ed.), Die Duesseldorfer Malerschule (1979); Die Handzeichnungen des 19. Jahrhunderts. Duesseldorfer Malerschule. Die erste Jahrhunderthaelfte Teil 1: Tafeln;. 1978. Teil 2: Textband. 1980. Bearb. v. Ute Ricke-Immel. (1980); B. Maaz, Johann Gottfried Schadow und die Kunst seiner Zeit (1995). (Pnina Nave / Sonja Beyer (2nd ed.)