Theodor Hildebrandt

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.

[citation needed] 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.

[1] At Düsseldorf, about 1830, 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.

[1][clarification needed] 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."