THEODOR

HILDEBRANDT (1804-1874)  , German painter, was born at Stettin . He was a disciple of the painter Schadow, and, on Schadow's appointment to the presidency of a new academy in the Rhenish provinces in 1828, followed that master to Dusseldorf . Hildebrandt began by painting pictures illustrative of Goethe and Shakespeare; but in this form he followed the traditions of the stage rather than the laws of nature . He produced rapidly " Faust and Mephistopheles " (1824), " Faust and Margaret " (1825), and " Lear and Cordelia " (1828) . He visited the Netherlands with Schadow in 1829, and wandered alone in 1830 to Italy; but travel did not alter his style, though it led him to cultivate alternately eclecticism and realism . At Dusseldorf, about 183o, he produced " Romeo and Juliet," " Tancred and Clorinda," and other works which deserved to be classed with earlier paintings; but during the same period he exhibited (1829) the " Robber " and (1832) the " Captain and his Infant Son," examples of an affected but kindly realism which captivated the public, and marked to a certain extent an epoch in Prussian art . The picture which made Hildebrandt's fame is the " Murder of the Children of King Edward " (1836), of which the original, afterwards frequently copied, still belongs to the Spiegel collection at Halberstadt . Comparatively late in life Hildebrandt tried his powers as an historical painter in pictures representing Wolsey and Henry VIII., but he lapsed again into the romantic in " Othello and Desdemona." After 1847 Hildebrandt gave himself up to portrait-painting, and in that branch succeeded in obtaining a large practice . He died at Dusseldorf in 1874 .