Goldschmidt, Hermann

Goldschmidt, Hermann (1802-1866), German painter and astronomer, was the son of a Jewish merchant, and was born at Frankfort on the 17th of June 1802. He for ten years assisted his father in his business; but, his love of art having been awakened while journeying in Holland, he in 1832 began the study of painting at Munich under Cornelius and Schnorr, and in 1836 established himself at Paris, where he painted a number of pictures of more than average merit, among which may be mentioned the “Cumaean Sibyl” (1844); an “Offering to Venus” (1845); a “View of Rome” (1849); the “Death of Romeo and Juliet” (1857); and several Alpine landscapes. In 1847 he began to devote his attention to astronomy; and from 1852 to 1861 he discovered fourteen asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, on which account he received the grand astronomical prize from the Academy of Sciences. His observations of the protuberances on the sun, made during the total eclipse on the 10th of July 1860, are included in the work of Mädler on the eclipse, published in 1861. Goldschmidt died at Fontainebleau on the 26th of August 1866.