Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Lehmann, Rudolf
LEHMANN, RUDOLF (1819–1905), painter, born on 19 Aug. 1819, at Ottensen, near Hamburg, was a younger son of Leo Lehmann, a miniature-painter practising in the town, by his wife Friederike Dellevie. Educated at the Johanneum, Hamburg, he left in 1837 for Paris, where his eldest brother, Henry, then a student under Ingres and later professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, undertook his art-training. At an aunt's salon in Paris Lehmann met many celebrated persons and inaugurated a cosmopolitan friendship with men of letters, artists, and musicians. From Paris he went to Munich, studying there under Kaulbach and Cornelius, and in 1838 joined his brother at Rome, where he spent six years copying, studying, and painting genre pictures of the peasantry, and greatly extending his acquaintance. Lehmann's first noteworthy compositions were paintings of a girl in the Abruzzi costume and a Capri grape-gatherer, 'Grazia.' The latter was awarded a gold medal at the Paris Salon in 1843, and both subjects were engraved by Julien. The French government commissioned a 'Madonna and Child,' for which Adelaide Ristori sat as the Madonna, and a 'St. Sebastian' for provincial churches, and also purchased for the museum at Lille his large painting 'Pope Sixtus V blessing the Pontine Marshes,' exhibited at the Salon of 1847. Returning to Paris, Lehmann witnessed the revolutions of 1847 and 1848, and, after a year at Hamburg, paid his first visit to London in April 1850. His first contribution to the Royal Academy, 1851, was a portrait of Earl Granville (engraved by W. Walker); 'Graziella,' taken from Lamartine's 'Confidences,' was exhibited in 1856.
Ten years' further residence in July (1856-66), mostly at Rome where his studio was much frequented by foreign visitors were marked by his large painting 'Sporgo di Canalo,' and broken by a visit to London and marriage there in 1861 to Amelia, the accomplished daughter of Robert Chambers [q. v.], the Scottish publisher. Lehmann returned with his family to London in 1866 and became a regular contributor of subject-pictures and portraits to the Royal Academy. Among his best-known works of this period were portraits of Sir Henry Bessemer (1867) and Baron Reuter engraved by T. O. Barlow, R.A. of Sir William Fergusson (Royal College of Surgeons), and and of Helen Faucit (Shakespeare memorial gallery, Stratford), both engraved by Toubert, and of Lady Enfield (1874). Of Robert Browning, who became an intimate family friend, Lehmann drew four portraits, two drawings and two paintings. The painting of 1875 was exhibited with 'La Lavandaja' and other of his works at Paris in 1878, and the modified replica of 1884 was presented by the artist to the National Portrait Gallery in 1890.
Portraiture occupied Lehmann's later years, but occasionally he produced such paintings as 'Undine' (1890) and 'Cromwell at Ripley Castle' (1892). Among his later sitters were Lord Revelstoke (engraved by Barlow), Earl Beauchamp (1877; replicas at Oxford and Worcester), Sir W. Siemens, George Joachim Goschen [q. v. Suppl. II], Sir T. Spencer Wells (Royal College of Surgeons), Sir Andrew Clark (Royal College of Physicians), and Miss Emily Davies (Girton College), one of his most successful portraits. Lehmann's portraits, usually signed with his monogram and the date, though smooth and painstaking in effect, possess a quiet dignity and are accurate likenesses. He contributed 111 subjects to Burlington House, and many others to the Groevenor Gallery and New Gallery. He was awarded three gold medals and made a knight of the falcon of Saxe-Weimar. His portrait by himself is in the Uffzzi Gallery, Florenoe, and another by Sir H. von Herkomer, R.A., belongs to his daughter, Mrs. Barry Pain. Lehmann, who was a naturalised British subject, died on 27 Oct. 1905 at Bournemede, Bushey, and his cremated remains were buried in Highgate cemetery. He was survived by three married daughters, Mrs. Bedford (Madame Liza Lehmann), Mrs. Charles Goetz, and Mrs. Barry Pain.
Lehmann's well-written 'Reminiscences' (1894) contain interesting biographical notes and information concerning social life in Rome. 'Men and Women of the Century' (1896, 4to) gives reproductions of twelve oil-portraits and seventy-two portrait-sketches from his 'Album of Celebrities,' now in the department of prints and drawings at the British Museum. This valuable series of crayon drawings from life, begun at Rome with portraits of Pius IX, Chopin, and Liszt, was continued during the artist's long career in England and abroad.
[The Times, 28 Oct. 1905; Athenæum, 4 Nov. 1905; An Artist's Reminiscences, by R. Lehmann, 1894; Memories of Half a Century, by R. C. Lehmann, 1908; Men and Women of the Century, ed; by H. C. Marillier, 1896; Royal Academy Exhibitors, by A. Graves, 1905; various exhibition catalogues; Royal Academy Pictures, by Cassell & Co.; Vapereau's Dictionnaire universel des Contemporains, 1880; Men and Women of the Time, 1899; information from his daughter, Mrs. Barry Pain, and nephew, Mr. R. C. Lehmann.]