BENCE ( 1836-1. A well-known painter, of Dutch origin and Belgian training, but English resi dence for more than half his life. lle was born in West Friesland January 8. 1836, and while still a boy showed so decided a vocation for art that he was sent to Antwerp to study under Wappers and for a longer period under Leys, who was making the medkeval and Renaissance periods live again as his pupil was to do with earlier ages. Pictures of Frankish and ancient Egyptian life occupied him between 1860 and 1875, by which time be had begun to devote him self mainly to depicting the life of the Greeks and Romans. Early essays in this style were the "Roman Amateur" and "Pyrrhic Dance," which he sent over to the Royal Academy in 1869. In the following year he went to live in London. His success was recognized by membership in the Academy in 1879 and knighthood in 1399. Among important later pictures are "The Roses of Heliogabalus" (1888), "Spring" (1894), "The Conversion of Paula" (1898), and "Therm Antoniniame" (1899). His work is remarkable
for its careful archteological research. Ile is peculiarly successful in defining the textures of marble and bronze, which he does with great realism and judgment. In composition he is scholarly: the various parts or quantities of his scenes are balanced with true artistic instinct. His drawing is good, his coloring faithful, but he is at times charged, and not without reason, with a lack of sentiment. It is a visual pleasure of coloring, intelligent grouping. fine differentia tion of textures and of stuffs that his pictures afford; they are solid and competent in exeeu Hon and they have the value of trustworthy records of the past ; but they rarely move more than the intellect and the sight. Consult Zhu mern, L. Alma-Tadcma, His Life and Work (Lon don, 1886) ; Georg Eliers, L. (Eng.
trans.. New York, 1886).