Lot 635 | Eduard Bendemann | King David with Harp

BENDEMANN, EDUARD
1811 Berlin - 1889 Düsseldorf

Title: King David with Harp.
Full figure in front of gold background. Probably design for a wall painting.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Mounting: Edges relined.
Measurement: 244 x 118cm.
Notation: Signed lower right: Prof. Ed. Bendemann / Düsseldorf.
Frame/Pedestal: Framed.
Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

Appointed director of the Düsseldorf Academy, Eduard Bendemann returned to the Rhine in 1859 as Gottfried Schadow's successor. Schadow himself was his great role model throughout his life, whom he, coming from Dresden, could now inherit. Bendemann, who was born and raised in Berlin in 1811, became acquainted with the teacher who was active there at the time at an early age through the environment of his upper middle-class family and became his student. In 1827 he followed him to the Düsseldorf Art Academy and became a member of the so-called "Schadow Circle", which became known as the Düsseldorf School of Painting far beyond the borders of the Rhineland.

Bendemann's painterly work deals primarily with biblical scenes in elegiac depictions in the monumental style of the Düsseldorf School of Painting, as well as numerous portraits, especially of well-known contemporaries. Bendemann's characteristic subject matter and format can also be seen in the work presented here, "King David with Harp," which, because it is executed with a slight underside view, suggests a design for a monumental wall painting.