THEODORE WENDEL

Landscape painter Theodore Wendel was born in Midway, Ohio, in 1859. At the age of 15, he joined the circus as an acrobat. He traveled with the circus for several years before leaving to study at the Royal Academy in Munich. There, and in Polling, Florence, and Venice, he and his friends became known as the “Duveneck Boys.” In the early 1880s, he was in New York, Boston, and Newport, and then returned to Europe to study at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1886 and 1887. During this time, he summered in Giverny, and was one of the few Americans whose works Monet praised. He returned to the United States and taught at Wellesley College and Cowles Art School during the 1890s. He created his strongest works between 1900 and1915, painting at Ipswich and Gloucester in Massachusetts. Although he was one of the most successful Impressionist painters in Boston and the United States, in 1917 an infection in his jaw caused him to stop painting until his death in 1932.