Carl Friedrich Lessing, Carl Sohn, and Theodor Hildebrandt

portrait

Friendship pictures, a tradition going back to Holbein, were revived in the nineteenth century. One of these, by Julius Hübner, shows the painters Carl Friedrich Lessing, Carl Sohn, and Theodor Hildebrandt. Their trompe l'oeil, inscribed frame recalls those of Jan van Eyck, the pictorial format is close to that of the early-fifteenth-century image formerly attributed to Uccello.

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Carl Friedrich Lessing, Carl Sohn, and Theodor Hildebrandt

About the Artist

Julius Hübner

1806 – 1882

German painter and poet (Rudolf Julius Benno Hübner). He studied at the Academy in Berlin with Wilhelm von Schadow. He first attracted attention by his picture of Ruth and Boaz (1825). He traveled in Italy and resided for the most part at Düsseldorf until 1839. In that year he settled at Dresden, becoming a professor in the Academy of Arts in 1841 and director of the Gallery of Paintings in 1871. He obtained the great gold medal at Brussels in 1851. Among his works in the Düsseldorf period are: The Fisherman (1828), after Goethe's ballad; Ruth and Naomi (1833) in the Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Christ and the Evangelists (1835), Job and his Friends (1838), Portrait of Frederick III in Frankfurt. To his Dresden period belong: Golden Age; Dispute between Luther and Dr. Eck (1866); Last Days of Frederick the Great; Cupid in Winter. He was the father of Emil Hübner, a distinguished classical scholar.

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