Adolf von Hildebrand (6 October 1847 – 18 January 1921) was a German sculptor.
Life
Hildebrand was born at
Marburg, the son of Marburg economics professor
Bruno Hildebrand. He studied at the
Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg, with
Kaspar von Zumbusch
Kaspar lemens EduardZumbusch (23 November 1830 – 27 September 1915), as of 1888 Ritter von Zumbusch (a nobiliary particle), was a German sculptor, born at Herzebrock, Westphalia, who became a pre-eminent sculptor of neo-Baroque monuments in Vi ...
at the
Munich Academy
The Academy of Fine Arts, Munich (german: Akademie der Bildenden Künste München, also known as Munich Academy) is one of the oldest and most significant art academies in Germany. It is located in the Maxvorstadt district of Munich, in Bavaria, ...
and with
Rudolf Siemering
Rudolph Siemering (10 August 1835, Königsberg - 23 January 1905, Berlin) was a German sculptor, known for his works in both Germany and the United States.
Biography
He attended the art academy in Königsberg and then became the pupil of Gustav ...
in
Berlin. From 1873 he lived in
Florence in the St Francesco Monastery, a secularized sixteenth-century monastery.
A friend of
Hans von Marées
Hans von Marées (24 December 1837 – 5 June 1887) was a German painter.
Initially specialising in portraiture he later turned to mythological subjects. He spent the last years of his life in Italy.
Life
Marées was born into a banking family ...
, he designed the architectural setting for the painter's murals in the library of the German Marine Zoological Institute at Naples (1873). He spent a significant amount of time in
Munich after 1889, executing a monumental fountain there, the
Wittelsbacher Brunnen. He is known for five monumental urban fountains and for the
Bismarck monument in Bremen, unveiled in 1910.
Hildebrand worked in a Neo-classical tradition, and set out his artistic theories in his book ''Das Problem der Form in der Bildenden Kunst'' ("The Problem of Form in Painting and Sculpture"), published in 1893.
He was ennobled by the King of Bavaria in 1904.
He died in Munich in 1921.
Family
In 1877 he married Irene Schäuffelen. They were parents of the painter Eva, Elizabeth, sculptor
Irene Georgii-Hildebrand, Sylvie, Bertele, and Catholic theologian
Dietrich von Hildebrand.
Critical opinion
In 1917, the American sculptor, conservative critic and author
Lorado Taft, while bemoaning the direction the German sculpture was moving in, described Hildebrand as:
a master of the old school and Florentine tradition, whose example has been a constant gospel of good taste and sanity. Even today, when the whole world has gone after false gods, his influence continues to be felt and I wonder if the fact that in the midst of this revolution German sculpture, however fantastic, remains essentially sculpture, is not due largely to the life long precept and practice of this admirable representative of the craft.[Taft, Lorado, ‘’Modern Tendencies in Sculpture: The Scammon Lectures at the Art Institute of Chicago, 1917’’ University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1922 p. 53-54]
See also
*
Girl Playing the Lute
*
Girl Playing the Lyre
References
World Wide Art Resources* ''Dietrich von Hildebrand: the Soul of a Lion'', by Alice von Hildebrand (Ignatius, 2000)
* ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' Vol. 11, pp 491–492 (1971)
External links
Problem of Form 1901/1918 ''Double Portrait of the Artist's Daughters'' in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hildebrand, Adolf Von
1847 births
1921 deaths
Modern sculptors
Adolf
People from the Electorate of Hesse
People from Marburg
Academy of Fine Arts, Nuremberg alumni
20th-century German sculptors
20th-century male artists
German male sculptors
German untitled nobility
19th-century sculptors
Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class)