Though born in Ohio, Theodore Wendel eventually made the town of Ipswich, MA, his full time permanent residence. He traveled in his early years, studied in Germany under fellow Ohioan Frank Duveneck, and through the great teacher met and befriended James McNeil Whistler. He later attended the Academie Julian in Paris at the same time as Dow and Henry Rodman Kenyon.

While living in France Wendel became one of the founders of the American art colony at Giverny. During his stay in the sleepy village in the late 1880s the young artist came under the spell of Claude Monet and Impressionism. Upon returning home, he settled in Boston, the early hotbed of American "painters of light."

Over the next few years Wendel exhibited his Impressionistic landscapes and built a reputation as a teacher. In 1897 he married the wealthy Philena Stone. Within a few years the couple had settled into a home overlooking the marshes on Argilla Road in Ipswich.

For the next 20 years Wendel maintained a busy art life, frequently commuting by train to his Boston studio, participating in exhibitions, teaching, or entertaining his fellow members of the prestigious Tavern Club in Boston. A skilled juggler and acrobat, Wendel was supposedly able to balance a chair on his chin while juggling and playing the harmonica.

Wendel also found time to paint. Never a master of the human figure, he instead concentrated on brilliant, Impressionistic landscapes. The Ipswich area with its delightful blend of marshes, shoreline, and hilly woodland, provided the artist with plenty of subject matter. He exhibited occasionally with Arthur Wesley Dow and other members of the local art community.

Sadly, the artist's career came to a premature end. For the last 15 years of his life Wendel suffered from a debilitating physical condition and was unable to record on canvas the scenery that so captivated him. Nevertheless, when he died in 1932, Wendel left behind a magnificent collection of paintings of his adopted Ipswich.