Eduard Julius Friedrich Bendemann

1811 Berlin – 1889 Düsseldorf

Eduard Bendemann belonged to a respected Jewish banker’s family and grew up in Berlin in a highly cultivated, art-loving environment. He turned to painting in 1826 and studied under his later brother-in-law, Wilhelm Schadow, whom he followed to the Düsseldorf Academy in 1827. Bendemann initially worked as a portrait painter and quickly came to be regarded as an important representative of the up-and-coming Düsseldorf School of painting. From 1829 to 1831 the artist spent two years in Rome in the company of Schadow and other painters in his circle. Following his return he achieved considerable initial success with his bib­lical history paintings. Throughout his life Bendemann remained faithful to the genre of monumental historical painting.