Painter · American
Attested lodger
Theodore Wendel
One of the seven painters who settled at Giverny in 1887, the year the Baudys opened their hotel.
- Dates1859 — 1932
- NationalityAmerican
- DisciplinePainter
- Place of birthMidway, Ohio, United States
Biography
Theodore Wendel was born at Midway, Ohio, in 1859. He studied at the McMicken School of Design in Cincinnati in 1876 and 1877, then at the Royal Academy in Munich in 1878. He worked with Frank Duveneck at Polling, Bavaria, in 1879, then in Florence and Venice in 1879 and 1880. He entered the Académie Julian in Paris in 1886. Back in the United States from 1888, he exhibited Impressionist landscapes in Boston from 1889. He lived in Boston from 1892 to 1897, taught at the Cowles Art School and at Wellesley College, then settled in 1898 on a farm at Ipswich, Massachusetts, whose views he painted, along with those of Gloucester, to the end. Illness limited his activity from 1917. He died at Ipswich in 1932.
Giverny
He was one of the small group of North American painters who settled at Giverny for the 1887 season — with John Leslie Breck, William Blair Bruce, Willard Metcalf, Louis Ritter, Theodore Robinson and Henry Fitch Taylor. He spent several seasons there in the late 1880s with Robinson, and took up an Impressionist handling: lighter colours, a looser touch.
Relation with the Hôtel Baudy
He arrives on 20 May 1888 and leaves on 7 September. The register gives his age as twenty-nine and his birthplace as Washington. On the same day, on the same page, another American signs in: Theodore Earl Butler. The two men enter the house together.
Principal works
Key points
- 1859Born — Midway, Ohio, United States
- Giverny1887 — 1889, seasons
- 1932Died
Sources
- 01Terra Foundation for American Art, “Impressionist Giverny: American Painters in France, 1885–1915”, exhibition texts
- 02Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Hotel Baudy guest register, 1887–1899 (AAA.hotebaud)
- 03Hôtel Baudy guest register, “Registre pour inscrire les voyageurs”, Philadelphia Museum of Art; transcribed by Carol Lowrey in William H. Gerdts, Monet’s Giverny, Abbeville Press, 1993, pp. 222-227.
- 04Carol Lowrey, “Artists’ Biographies”, in William H. Gerdts, Monet’s Giverny: An Impressionist Colony, Abbeville Press, New York, 1993, pp. 214-221.
From the register
Under the same roof
The painters whose stay overlaps this one. The register establishes that they lodged in the house on the same days, and nothing more.
- John Leslie Breck 111 days from May 20, 1888 to September 7, 1888
- Dawson Dawson-Watson 111 days from May 20, 1888 to September 7, 1888
- Theodore Earl Butler 111 days from May 20, 1888 to September 7, 1888
- Philip Leslie Hale 99 days from June 1, 1888 to September 7, 1888
Around them
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