Bernhard Plockhorst
Bernhard Plockhorst was a German painter and graphic artist. In Germany, Plockhorst is mainly known to experts today, whereas his pictures are still very popular in the United States and their reproductions can be found in many American homes and churches.
Plockhorst was born in Braunschweig, Germany, where he had a 5year education in lithography at the Collegium Carolinum, after which he trained to be a painter with Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld in Dresden in 1848, with Carl von Piloty in Leipzig and Munich, and finally with Thomas Couture in Paris in 1853. In Munich Plockhorst copied the paintings of Rubens and Tizian in the Old Pinakothek. He also took study travels to Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy before settling in Berlin where he began to paint portraits, but he also proved his talent for religious themes with a large painting . From 1866 to 1869 he was a professor at the Grandducal Saxonian Art School in Weimar, where painter Otto Piltz was one of his pupils. Then Plockhorst returned to Berlin where he died in 1907.
Source: Wikipedia