Ferdinand Max Bredt

Ferdinand Max Bredt was born in Leipzig, Germany. Wikipedia and related reference entries give his birth year as 1860, though auction house catalogue notes from Bonhams and Christie's instead list 1868. No source consulted supplies a fully corroborated exact birth date, so that discrepancy is noted here rather than resolved. He signed some works "F. M. Bredt," and auction records sometimes list him surname first as "Bredt, Ferdinand Max"; both forms refer to the same painter.

He trained first at the School of Art in Stuttgart, then continued his studies in Munich under Wilhelm Lindenschmit the Younger. He traveled extensively in Greece, Italy, Turkey, and Tunisia, and this travel supplied the subject matter, courtyards, interiors, and female figures in exoticized settings, for which he became known as an Orientalist painter. His work was exhibited internationally in Paris, Berlin, Chicago, and London between at least 1891 and 1905. In 1893, two of his paintings were selected to represent Germany in the German national section at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, his most clearly documented public honor.

Bredt died in 1921. Database sources place the death on 18 June 1921 in Ruhpolding, Germany, but that date and place come from reference and auction databases rather than a contemporary obituary or major art-press notice, so it is presented here with moderate rather than full confidence.

No verifiable, exact-wording review from a named critic in a major period newspaper or journal could be located for Bredt. What survives instead is unsigned auction-house and archive description: a Christie's auction note characterizes him as one of Germany's foremost Orientalist painters of the nineteenth century, and the online database WahooArt similarly describes him as a leading German Orientalist painter. These are institutional and commercial characterizations rather than signed contemporary criticism, and should be read as such. His most concrete documented mark of recognition remains the 1893 selection of two works to represent Germany at the Chicago exposition.

Bredt's best-documented auction result is Selbstbewusst, which sold at Christie's, London, on 19 June 2008 for a hammer price of GBP 132,000; the Christie's lot record does not specify whether that figure includes buyer's premium. Separate market aggregators, MutualArt and FindArtInfo, report higher headline maximum prices for the artist, USD 1,002,294 and roughly USD 815,907 respectively, but neither discloses the underlying work, sale house, or exact date behind those figures, so they cannot be tied to a confirmed lot and are treated here as unverified rather than as the artist's record.

Outside these figures, Bredt's market runs far lower. Dorotheum has recorded a realized price of EUR 9,750 for a Bredt lot, and Bonhams has estimated another work, "By the Fountain," at GBP 40,000 to 60,000. The gap between the Christie's result and these more typical outcomes suggests a thin market where a single strong lot can distort the picture, which is worth weighing before treating any one number as representative.

Bredt has no catalogue raisonne and no gallery, foundation, or estate representation; verification of any work rests on auction provenance and the catalogue notes of the selling house rather than a scholarly authority. Public sources consulted here do not identify specific museum collections holding his work with confidence, so collectors should not assume institutional placement without independent confirmation. Basic biographical facts, including his birth year (1860 versus 1868 across sources) and the exact date of his death, are inconsistently reported even in standard reference and auction databases, and his auction record itself varies by aggregator. Given all of this, anyone transacting in his work should treat published price and biographical claims, including the ones on this page, as a starting point for direct verification rather than a settled record.