Heinrich Hofmann

Heinrich Hofmann (1824–1911) was born in Darmstadt into an artistic family and had his first lessons from the engraver Ernst Rauch. In 1842 he entered the Düsseldorf Academy, studying under Theodor Hildebrandt and then in the studio of Wilhelm von Schadow, before further study in Antwerp, Munich and Italy. In Rome he came to know Peter von Cornelius, who advised him for four years on The Arrest of Christ. He settled in Dresden in 1862, gave himself increasingly to religious painting and in 1870 succeeded Johann Carl Baehr at the Dresden Academy. He is best known for his many scenes from the life of Christ, grounded in the old German, Dutch and Italian masters. John D. Rockefeller Jr. bought three of them, now at Riverside Church in New York, among them Christ and the Rich Young Ruler and Christ in Gethsemane, which the church describes as one of the most copied paintings in the world. Here: Christ, Christ and the Rich Young Ruler and Christ in Gethsemane.