Eduard von Gebhardt worked at a period when the terms of art itself were being renegotiated.
The record lists Eduard von Gebhardt as Baltic German painter (1838-1925).
Eduard von Gebhardt was born at Järva-Jaani in 1838. His recorded nationality is Russia. He trained at Imperial Academy of Arts and Academy of Fine Arts, Karlsruhe.
The nineteenth century broke the academy's authority: independent exhibitions, dealers and the beginnings of modernism.
He worked as painter, university teacher and artist.
An artist's reputation moves with taste, but the work stays exactly where it was left.
That the work was made in Russia shaped it: artistic traditions, academies and the galleries that decide what is seen have never been evenly distributed.
Eduard von Gebhardt died in 1925, aged 87. The work remains, hanging in collections that outlived both the artist and the market that first priced it.
