Oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right: “E. Hildebrandt 1847”.
Dimensions with frame: 70x86 cm (42x58 cm)
Eduard Hildebrandt (Gdańsk 1818–1868 Berlin) was a German marine and landscape painter, traveler, and native of Gdańsk. In his early youth, he assisted his father, a house painter. At the age of not quite twenty, he left for Berlin, where he became a student of the marine painter Wilhelm Krause (1803–64) and, together with his professor, undertook a study trip to Rügen, and then to the Mediterranean coasts of France, Italy, and Greece (1838–1840). In 1840, he also traveled to Scandinavia, England, and Scotland, and a year later to Paris, where he studied for half a year in the studio of Eugene Isabey (1803–1886), and one of his paintings was honored at the official Salon. Upon his return to Berlin in 1843, he met the traveler, naturalist, and geographer Alexander von Humboldt, who introduced him to the court of Frederick William IV, King of Prussia. The king commissioned him to paint a view of Rio de Janeiro. His trip to South America turned into a longer journey that also took him through North America (1844–45), from which the artist brought back numerous studies of landscapes, cityscapes, harbors, and more. In the years that followed, the artist was almost constantly traveling, visiting the Canary Islands, Madeira, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Sicily, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, and Greece. In 1856, he even reached the Arctic, and in 1862, he undertook a voyage around the world, visiting Trieste, Suez, Aden, India, Tibet, Siam, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau, Japan, the Philippines, the islands of the Pacific Ocean, Central America, and the United States. In 1864, he published *Reise Um Die Erde* in Berlin, a work containing chromolithographs from his voyage around the world. He painted in oils and watercolors. His art was widely acclaimed—in 1855, he became a professor at the Berlin Academy, and several of his paintings were purchased by Frederick William IV of Prussia, who had already appointed Hildebrandt as his court painter in 1847. The artist maintained ties with his hometown of Gdańsk and frequently sent paintings to exhibitions at the Artus Court. He also exhibited frequently in Berlin and other cities. In 1868, he held a major exhibition of watercolors at the Crystal Palace in London. The artist’s paintings are held in the collections of many museums around the world, including the Louvre, the Hermitage, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and museums in Boston, Montreal, and Hong Kong. They are also found in private and museum collections in Poland.
