VILHELM - FERDINAND BENDZ
Odense 1804 - Vicenza 1832
One of the first pupils of C. W. Eckersberg at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Bendz had enrolled there in 1820, taking additional private lessons from his teacher in May of 1822. While he seems to have left his master's immediate circle for a four year period, he continued his studies at the Academy and became a central figure of the new school of younger painters. Indeed, two of his finest early pictures are of artists at work, a portrait of Christian Holm (1826), turning from his easel to look at the viewer and a portrait of a young artist (Ditlev Blunck) examining a sketch in a mirror. In the latter work we see the artist half turned away, looking at the reverse image of his sketch and allowing the viewer to see his full face. In filling the studio with objects of complex symbolism Bendz displays an extraordinary and original talent.
Bendz's love of sophisticated lighting, complex compositional forms and hidden symbolism are not found in the work of his master or his contemporaries and suggest that, had he lived longer, he might have developed into a truly great painter. He was evidently fascinated with the role and work of the artist, as can be seen in the two interiors cited above and his famous painting of The Life Class at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (1826) which shows the students gathered around drawing a nude male figure. Equal attention, however, is given to the figure of the Academy servant altering the lights who stands in almost identical pose to the nude model. In this picture, like his most famous work The Smoking Club (1827-28), he clearly enjoys playing with the effects of dramatic chiaroscuro effects.
In 1827 Bendz returned to Eckersberg's circle, taking private lessons once more from him in September and October of the following year and again in 1830. Gradually he simplified his style, as if he had now satisfied himself with the extent of his bravura talent and was now ready to develop a clearer but at the same time more subtle vision of the world. Over the next four years his interior scenes display delicately harmonized colors set off by unusual lighting, more often from natural rather the artificial light of his earlier interiors. Of these, the Portrait of the Waagepetersen Family (1830) and the Interior at Amaliegade with the Artist's Brothers (ca 1830) serve as particularly notable examples, their pared down simplicity reflecting the continuing influence of Eckersberg. In 1831 he set out on an unconventional grand tour route of his own choosing, made possible with the help of a royal grant. After passing through Hamburg, Berlin and Dresden he settled in Munich for a year. There he painted his last major work, Artists in the Evening at Finck's Coffee House, evidence that he was immediately received
