Eduard Steinbrück

 

His father was a merchant from Tangermünde and, in 1817, he became apprenticed to a businessman in Bremen. He eventually decided to follow his own inclinations and become a painter so, in 1822, he went to Berlin, where he worked in the studios of Wilhelm Wach. He produced his first independent paintings, on religious subjects, in 1825.

In 1829, he moved to Düsseldorf, where he mingled with the local artists. He then went to Rome, where he joined the German art community, and stayed until 1830.^[1] Upon returning to Germany, he married Amalia Martens and settled in Berlin. In 1833, he felt the need for improving his work and returned to Düsseldorf, where he studied with Friedrich Wilhelm von Schadow at the Kunstakadmie. During his time there, he sent his works to exhibitions in Berlin. After a major sale to the art dealer, Johann Gottfried Böker [de], who had a gallery in New York City, he focused much of his attention on the art market in the United States. In 1846 Amalia became seriously ill, and they returned to Berlin to be with her family. She died the following year, leaving him with three sons and a daughter.

In Berlin, King Frederick William IV gave him numerous commissions for works in public buildings and churches; beginning with frescoes in the chapel at Berlin Palace.^[2] Over the next few years, he would create works at the Neues Museum, the Church of Peace, Potsdam, St. Jacob's Church [de] and St. Hedwig's Cathedral. He also produced what he considered to be his masterwork, "Die Magdeburger Jungfrauen", depicting a scene from the Sack of Magdeburg, which occupied him from 1852 to 1866.

In the early 1840s, he had become interested in Catholicism when his friend, Ernst Deger, gave him a book by Clemens Brentano: Das bittere Leiden unsers Herrn Jesu Christi (The Bitter Suffering of Our Lord Jesus Christ), which dealt with the life of the mystic, Anna Katharina Emmerick. In 1858, after a series of disagreements with the Protestant clergy, he formally converted for what he called 'reasons of conscience".

In 1863 he remarried, to Charlotte Witt. Over the next few years, he turned to painting idyllic works; featuring children, angels and fairies. In 1876, he retired to Landeck, a resort city he had visited during his summer vacations. He died there six years later.

• Steinbrück, Eduard. In: Georg Kaspar Nagler: Neues allgemeines Künstler-Lexicon. E. A. Fleischmann, München 1847, Band 17, S. 278 ff. (Google Books).
• Eduard Steinbrück. In: Wolfgang Müller von Königswinter: Düsseldorfer Künstler aus den letzten fünfundzwanzig Jahren. Kunstgeschichtliche Briefe. Rudolph Weigel, Leipzig 1854, S. 186 ff. (Google Books).
• Eduard Steinbrück. In: Ernst Förster: Geschichte der deutschen Kunst. Teil 5: Von 1820 bis zur Gegenwart. T. O. Weigel, Leipzig 1860, S. 372 ff. (Google Books).
• Eduard Steinbrück. Professor an der Akademie der Künste zu Berlin (Autobiography). In: David August Rosenthal: Convertitenbilder aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert. Band 1, 2. Teil: Deutschland II. Hurter’sche Buchhandlung, Schaffhausen 1866, S. 963 ff. (Digitalisat).
• Eduard Steinbrück. In: Adolf Rosenberg: Die Berliner Malerschule 1819–79. Studien und Kritiken. Berlin 1879, S. 51 ff. (Digitalisat^{[dead link‍]}).
• Eduard Daelen (1908), "Steinbrück, Eduard", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 54, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 463–464
• Eduard Steinbrück. In: Alban Stolz: Fügung und Führung. Band 2: Julius Mayer (Hrsg.): Alban Stolz und Friedrich von Drais, Eduard Steinbrück, Augustin Arndt, Selma von Seydlitz, Klotilde von Werthern, Klara von Dieckhoff. Herder, Freiburg 1924, S. 33 ff. (Digitalisat).

 

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• More works by Steinbrück @ Artothek
• More works by Steinbrück @ ArtNet