The Düsseldorf Academy was the first result. Of this school even Frenchmen have been willing to write: “The school of Düsseldorf, from Kaulbach and Lessing to Knaus, and the school of Munich, with Piloty, Adam, Horschelt, Lier, etc., by returning to picturesque truth have returned to their own times and to their own country.”
The “National Gallery,” as yet, has but two cartoons from Kaulbach; no painting. The fine old “Treppen Haus,” in the Royal Museum, should be in this modern gallery to make the collection chronological, for these frescoes belong essentially to modern art, and would be in their place, leading from the Cornelius Saals, as Kaulbach was one of his favorite pupils.
As the Düsseldorf Academy is the oldest of German schools, a glance at the first artists educated there will be proper. Schadow, who was born in 1789, and who succeeded Cornelius as director of this academy, is represented by two pictures, “The Walk to Emmaus,” and a female head. One discovers at once more poetical feeling than in the pictures of his master, who delighted, like Milton, in painting
“Dread horror plumed—
Dire tossings and deep groans.”
Schadow died in Düsseldorf in 1862, leaving such pupils as Hübner, Lessing, Bendemann, etc., the latter being appointed, in 1859, his successor. Bendemann carries many honors—and paints good pictures—the gold medal from the Paris Exposition of 1837, and the medal from Vienna in 1873. He is knight of the “Order of Merit,” Fellow of the Societies at Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Cassel, Antwerp, Brussels, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Philadelphia. He belongs intimately to that class of German artists who began to modify the rigid dignity and formal tendencies of historical pictures by freedom of style and warmth of color. In this sense his great picture (now in the National Gallery), “Jeremiah at the Fall of Jerusalem,” was said to produce an epoch in art. Bendemann resigned his position as director of the Düsseldorf Academy in 1867.
Of all the Düsseldorf artists, Karl Frederick Lessing (whose style lies between the old and new school), Ludwig Knaus, and the brothers Achenbach, are the best known in America. In Cincinnati some of the best pictures of Lessing, and Andreas and Oswald Achenbach can be seen in private galleries, while in Boston and New York “The Golden Wedding” and the “Holy Family,” Knaus’s chief-d´œuvres, can be found. The latter picture proved to be too valuable for the Empress of Russia (by whom it had been ordered) to take,[I] and so fell into the hands of a wealthy New York lady, who was attracted toward it when it was on exhibition in Berlin two years ago. Lessing’s original sketch of “The Martyrdom of Huss,” is in Cincinnati, as well as some of Andreas Achenbach’s best marine pictures. The names of Schräder, Schirmer, Hübner, Knille, Hoff, and Gelhardt, are not so well known outside of Germany. The German artists, with the exception of Makart, who, as an Austrian, does not class himself with the northern German school, left such an indescribably blank page in the Philadelphia Exposition, owing to their indifference and timidity, and want of energy in sending off their pictures, that the American mind is sadly prejudiced against German art. The French pictures have so long crowded the market that not until some young disciples of the Munich school returned to New York several years ago, would they believe that there was such a thing as German art. And now the impression is that it all concentrates in Munich. What is to be done with Knaus, Werner, Richter, Knille, Gussow, and the other distinguished names in northern Germany?
In Knaus, to whom we have already referred, and who has been recently called to Berlin as director of one of the newly-established “Meister Ateliers,” one finds that rare accordance of the character of the man with the peculiar excellencies of his productions. His genre pictures reflect his own spirit. He is as genuine, unaffected, and fresh in his feelings as the children he paints.
Werner, the director of the Royal Academy of Berlin, made the designs for the Column of Victory, and has a tremendous productive power, almost equal to Makart, but he is far from possessing the luxuriant imagination and oriental instinct for color that distinguishes the latter from the artists of his day.
Gentz paints with vigor and fine sentiment oriental pictures. He has spent much time in the East, and has innumerable treasures for his house, which is one of the most attractive in Berlin.