Carl Gottfried Eybe

Carl Gottfried Eybe (1813–1893) was a 19th-century German painter, lithographer and sculptor.

Life and work Carl Gottfried Eybe was born 17 December 1813 in Hamburg, the son to Gottfried Eybe, an innkeeper of Königsberg. After completing an apprenticeship as a merchant, he was introduced to painting by Friedrich Carl Gröger and Heinrich Jacob Aldenrath, and Christoph Wilhelm Wohlien with whom he remained friends all his life. Another friend was the painter Hermann Becker.

From 1839 to 1847 Eybe studied at the Düsseldorf Royal Arts Academy under Karl Ferdinand Sohn and later, Friedrich Wilhelm von Schadow. Under Schadow's influence he produced paintings on religious themes, such as Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert (1845), or Caritas (1847) which was acquired by the Hamburger Kunsthalle. After study, in 1848 he became a painter at Hamburg and earned his living for a time with sculpture and portrait lithographs. Later study trips took him through Germany, and to the Netherlands, Hungary and Northern Italy. He joined the Verein Düsseldorfer Künstler zu gegenseitiger Unterstützung und Hülfe (Association of Düsseldorf Artists for Mutual Support and Assistance), and in 1846 became a member of the Malkasten artists' association. He was also a member of the Hamburger Künstler-Verein (Hamburg Artists' Association).

In Hamburg he turned to genre figurative themes, including depictions of children, such as in Kinder im Walde (1851) and Badende Kinder (1858), and received middle class portrait commissions. Eybe's works in exhibitions were such as those at Munich in 1854, Düsseldorf in 1880, and Hamburg in 1887. Portraits of Eybe, the pencil drawing by Christian Eduard Böttcher, and an oil by Ludwig Knaus from 1850, are kept at the Malkasten-Haus headquarters of Malkasten artists' association in Düsseldorf.

Eybe died 17 February 1893 in Blankenese.

Selected works Susanna in the Bath (with landscape painted by Andreas Achenbach), Hamburg, Kunsthalle Portrait of Johann Georg Hackiusand Portrait of Barbara Hackius (1839), Hamburg, Kunsthalle Portrait of Louis Vohsen and Portrait of Fanny Vohsen (1844) Portrait of the painter Julius Bakof (1847), Hamburg, Kunsthalle Portrait of Peter Ludwig Ahrens and Portrait of Johanna Magdalena Ahrens (1847), Hamburg, Museum of Hamburg History Portrait of Hans Schierven Knoph (1850), Hamburg, Museum of Hamburg History Portrait of a Boy (1875), Kiel, Art Gallery Portrait of the Lodge Master F. C. L. Wage, previously at the Provincial Lodge, Lower Saxony