Teodors Ūders: 19 cool facts

Teodors Ūders (3 May 1868, Valmiera – 20 August 1915, Valmiera) was a Latvian artist.

Teodors Ūders had a colourful career; ignoring the wishes of his parents that he become a farmer, he left to become a cook upon a boat in 1884 and would spend the next six years at sea. Returning to Riga, he later spent three years as a reservist in a Guards unit in Saint Petersburg, after which he working himself to personal studies of philosophy until 1897. He after that spent two years at the present-day Saint Petersburg Art and Industry Academy, studying art. For several years he later traveled throughout the Russian Empire following his wife, earning a successful painting portraits and landscapes. In 1905 he returned to his hometown Valmiera in present-day Latvia and took going on position as an art hypothetical and would stay there until his death in 1915. Disregarded by the local bourgeoisie, his art wasn’t widely recognised until after his death, as noted when regret by art critic Boris Vipper.