Wilhelm Hensel (6 July 1794 – 26 November 1861) was a German painter, brother of
Luise Hensel, husband to
Fanny Mendelssohn, and brother-in-law to
Felix Mendelssohn.
Life and career
Wilhelm Hensel was born on 6 July 1794 in the German town of
Trebbin
Trebbin (; Polish ''Trzebin''Thomas Kantzow "Pomerania", tom 1, Szczecin 2005, ) is a town in the Teltow-Fläming district of Brandenburg, Germany. It is situated on the river Nuthe, 14 km north of Luckenwalde, and 36 km southwest of Be ...
, in the present-day
state
State may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State
* ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States
* ''Our S ...
of
Brandenburg
Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a state in the northeast of Germany bordering the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an area of 29,480 sq ...
, to a
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
preacher. He was a pupil at the royal school of architecture, but soon discovered his true passion, painting. His studies were interrupted when he joined the military. Through this, he took advantage of two deployments in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
to learn painting techniques. However, he experimented with writing and poetry, and enjoyed enough success that he once considered giving up painting.
Because many of Hensel's family members were famous themselves, and perhaps sacrificing his development as a painter, Hensel painted or drew
portrait
A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this r ...
s almost exclusively, although he produced some drawings for
almanac
An almanac (also spelled ''almanack'' and ''almanach'') is an annual publication listing a set of current information about one or multiple subjects. It includes information like weather forecasts, farmers' planting dates, tide tables, and othe ...
s, and produced artwork found in some of the halls of the Schauspielhaus, an important theater in
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
. In 1825 he went, with the support of the king, to Italy, where he was employed in painting copies of some of
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael (; or ; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual a ...
's works.
In 1828, Hensel moved back to Berlin, where he became the royal
court painter
A court painter was an artist who painted for the members of a royal or princely family, sometimes on a fixed salary and on an exclusive basis where the artist was not supposed to undertake other work. Painters were the most common, but the cour ...
, and both a professor and member of the Academic Senate. He also married
Fanny Mendelssohn; they had known each other since he was a student and she was 16.
[Charlie Connelly "Great European lives #244 Fanny Mendelssohn." ''The New European'' Issue 291 May 21-18, 2022.] His activities as an artist were interrupted in 1848, when revolutions broke out all over Germany, and Hensel became an avid advocate of the conservative political parties of the time. Afterwards, he settled back into being an artist, and died on 26 November 1861 in Berlin. The German author
Theodor Fontane
Theodor Fontane (; 30 December 1819 – 20 September 1898) was a German novelist and poet, regarded by many as the most important 19th-century German-language realist author. He published the first of his novels, for which he is best known toda ...
memorialized Hensel in the last chapter of his work ''
Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg
''Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg'' ("Ramblings through Brandenburg", "Rambles in Brandenburg" or "Walks through the March of Brandenburg") is a five-volume travelogue by the German writer Theodor Fontane, originally published in 1862&ndas ...
'' (Walks through the
March of Brandenburg
The Margraviate of Brandenburg (german: link=no, Markgrafschaft Brandenburg) was a major principality of the Holy Roman Empire from 1157 to 1806 that played a pivotal role in the history of Germany and Central Europe.
Brandenburg developed out o ...
). Among his best-known works are ''Christus in der Wüste'' (Christ in the Desert), ''Kaiser Wenzel'', ''Italienische Landleute am antiken Brunnen'' (Italian Peasants by an Ancient Fountain), and over 1000 drawings of well-known people of the German
romantic period.
His wife,
Fanny Mendelssohn, and his brother-in-law,
Felix Mendelssohn, were both important pianists and composers, but Hensel himself apparently was entirely unmusical: when he participated in the premiere of Felix's ''
Son and Stranger'' at a private performance honoring the silver anniversary of the Mendelssohn parents in 1826, despite determined prompting he was unable to sing his part of the mayor, even though it comprised only a few bars of the single note F.
[Aldrich, Richard, "Of Music and Musicians: Hugo Wolff, His Songs and His Admirers—Mendelssohn's "Return of the Roamer" and Its Origin," ''The New York Times'', November 22, 1903, accessed November 23, 2009]
/ref>
Hensel's sister, Luise Hensel, was a widely read religious poet.
He and Fanny Mendelssohn had one child, Sebastian Ludwig Felix Hensel (1830–1898). Hensel's grandchildren include the philosopher Paul Hensel
Paul Hugo Wilhelm Hensel (17 May 1860, Groß-Barthen near Königsberg – 11 November 1930, Erlangen) was a German philosopher.
Biography
Hensel was born in Groß-Barten near Königsberg, Prussia. He was the son of the landowner and entrep ...
(1860–1930) and the mathematician Kurt Hensel
Kurt Wilhelm Sebastian Hensel (29 December 1861 – 1 June 1941) was a German mathematician born in Königsberg.
Life and career
Hensel was born in Königsberg, East Prussia (today Kaliningrad, Russia), the son of Julia (née von Adelson) and lan ...
(1861–1941).
References
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hensel, Wilhelm
1794 births
1861 deaths
People from Teltow-Fläming
German Protestants
19th-century German painters
19th-century German male artists
German male painters
Hensel family
Court painters
Burials at Dreifaltigkeitsfriedhof I, Berlin