Franz Eduard Meyerheim

His father was the painter, Friedrich Eduard Meyerheim. His younger brother, Paul Friedrich Meyerheim also became a painter. His uncles, Wilhelm Alexander Meyerheim (1815–1882) and Hermann Meyerheim (fl.1860s) were artists as well.

His first art lesons were provided by his family members. In 1854, at the age of sixteen, he entered the Prussian Academy of Arts. Four years later, he transferred to the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and had his first exhibition. He also travelled extensively, to Tyrolia, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland, making sketches of humble, rural people, who would be his primary subjects.

Following a reorganization of the Prussian Academy, he was appointed Professor of anatomical drawing, a post he held until 1878, when illness forced him to retire. He died two years later, while convalescing in Marburg, at the age of forty-two. The cause of death was given as a "softening of the brain" (encephalomalacia).

• Lionel von Donop (1885), "Meyerheim, Franz", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB) (in German), 21, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 642–643
• Extract from the Bénézit Dictionary of Artists @ Oxford Art Online

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Franz Eduard Meyerheim.

• More works by Meyerheim @ ArtNet