The New International Encyclopædia/Bendemann, Eduard Julius Friedrich
BENDEMANN, bĕn'de-mȧn,  (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.