Eduard Hildebrandt

San Francisco: View up California Street to Nob Hill with Grace Church on the left, and the Parrott Building and St Mary's to the right. Drawn from life during Hildebrandt's 'round-the-world' voyage.

The German traveller and watercolourist Eduard Hildebrandt first trained as a house painter, like his father, before entering the studio of the marine artist Wilhelm Krause. After travelling to Paris in 1840, where he studied watercolour techniques and landscape painting, Hildebrandt befriended the eminent German naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt. It was through Humboldt that he received his first major commission from the king of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm IV; to paint a view of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. This gave Hildebrandt the opportunity to travel around the Americas, painting a series of magnificent landscape watercolours as he progressed.

This expedition inspired future travels, notably through the Mediterranean and Middle East (1851-52), the Arctic (1856) and a round-the-world voyage (1862-64). This last journey produced several hundred watercolour and pencil sketches taken from nature and direct observation, a selection of which were published in chromolithograph form as Reise um die Erde, or ‘Around the World’ (1867).

Hildebrandt’s style is marked by loose, almost proto-Impressionist brushwork, as well as a vibrant use of colour and contrast. Chromolithography, the first viable method of printing colour, was ideally suited as a means of conveying his work in printed form; the painstaking layering of colours demanded by the process ensured that the prints stayed true to Hildebrandt’s bold and dramatic vision of the world. These beautiful images are among the most recognisable and collectable topographical prints published during the nineteenth century.


The German traveller and watercolourist Eduard Hildebrandt first trained as a house painter, like his father, before entering the studio of the marine artist Wilhelm Krause. After travelling to Paris in 1840, where he studied watercolour techniques and landscape painting, Hildebrandt befriended the eminent German naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt. It was through Humboldt that he received his first major commission from the king of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm IV; to paint a view of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. This gave Hildebrandt the opportunity to travel around the Americas, painting a series of magnificent landscape watercolours as he progressed.

This expedition inspired future travels, notably through the Mediterranean and Middle East (1851-52), the Arctic (1856) and a round-the-world voyage (1862-64). This last journey produced several hundred watercolour and pencil sketches taken from nature and direct observation, a selection of which were published in chromolithograph form as Reise um die Erde, or ‘Around the World’ (1867).

Hildebrandt’s style is marked by loose, almost proto-Impressionist brushwork, as well as a vibrant use of colour and contrast. Chromolithography, the first viable method of printing colour, was ideally suited as a means of conveying his work in printed form; the painstaking layering of colours demanded by the process ensured that the prints stayed true to Hildebrandt’s bold and dramatic vision of the world. These beautiful images are among the most recognisable and collectable topographical prints published during the nineteenth century.