The New International Encyclopædia/Bendemann, Eduard Julius Friedrich

BENDEMANN, bĕn'de-mȧn, Eduard Julius Friedrich (1811-89). A German painter. He was born in Berlin of Jewish parents December 3, 1811, and went, at sixteen years of age, to study in Düsseldorf. In 1828 he painted a portrait of his grandmother which attracted some attention. He went to Italy in 1830, and remained a year. On his return he began his first great picture, “The Jews Mourning in Exile,” which was exhibited in the following year at Berlin, and, as the work of a youth of twenty-one, created a sensation. It is now in the Museum at Cologne. With it may be classed two other important pictures on kindred subjects, “Jeremiah amid the Ruins of Jerusalem” (1837) and “The Departure for Exile” (1872). Bendemann went to Dresden in 1838, as professor of painting at the Academy, and was soon commissioned by the King of Saxony to decorate some of the principal rooms in the royal palace there. For the throne-room he designed a frieze painted on a gold background running around the room, intended to show the whole of human life, from birth to death, in one continuous design. He also executed for this hall four large historical pictures from the life of Henry the Fowler. This exacting work occupied the greater part of his time for the next fifteen years. From 1859 to 1867 he was director of the Düsseldorf Academy. His better known paintings include “Shepherd and Shepherdess” (1845), “Cain and Abel” (1864), “Penelope” (1877), and “The Sacrifice of Iphigenia” (1882). He also made some illustrations for the Nibelungenlied which were much admired. He died in Düsseldorf December 27, 1889.