Gustave Richter is considered by many the greatest of the German artists. He is a favorite at court, and the National Gallery is indebted to the emperor for the most wonderful picture he ever painted, “The Raising of Jairus’ Daughter.” Richter married the daughter of Meyerbeer, the composer. He paints his wife as often as Rembrandt painted “Saskia,” and in much the same style. One of the best, although less known of these portraits, is that called by the artist “Revery.”
Knille’s well-known picture of “Tannhäuser and Venus,” with its superb half-defined drapery of silk and satin, from which the faultless Venus rises, and the pellucid streams of light flow, and the flowers invested with purpureal gleams, is in the possession of the National Gallery.
Carl Becker is well liked in America, but it is doubtful, however, if the talented dwarf Menzel is ever heard of outside Germany. His countrymen are too fond of his pictures to allow them to go beyond their reach. He can paint anything and everything, from the glittering rooms of Sanssouci to the forging and rolling machine works. He has a picture of this latter class in the Gallery, where the varied lights—daylight, firelight, reflected light from red-hot iron, all fall upon the faces of the men; a feat in painting but little less remarkable than that of Rembrandt’s “Ronde de Nuit,” at Amsterdam.
There remains but the “Schlachten-maler,” as the Germans call them, with Camphausen at the head, whose battle scenes are multiplying in times of peace as if they were still longing for
“The smoke of the conflict,
The cannon’s deep roar.”
If one regards works of art as the necessary products of their age, these artists are following with fidelity the direction of their own times. The emperor is a soldier at heart, and Camphausen as court painter only represents his sovereign’s taste on canvas. Steffeck, Dietz, Franz, Adam, belong to this same class. When Pascal said, “How vain is painting which excites our admiration for the likeness of things, the original of which we do not admire,” Louis Vierdot calls him a philosopher, and especially a Christian, but not an artist. In looking at these battle pictures and Gussow’s burly girls and toothless old men, we prefer not to be artistic. “Ah,” said a young Munich disciple, “we do not think much of Gussow here in Munich; he is like the ceramic sensation; he will soon wear out.” But the Berlinese laugh this jealousy to scorn. They have a genius among them in this very sensational Gussow. He is a young man not more than thirty, who was called to Berlin from Düsseldorf to take the ladies’ class in the Berlin Academy. He teaches these enthusiastic pupils as if they were strong, rough men, preparing themselves to encounter criticism; to banish everything that reminds them of an artificial world; that they may help him to restore nature to her simplicity, and in so doing absolve themselves from all laws by which perverted ideas seek security against themselves. He says, “Paint what you see! Art is not always to seek for the beautiful. A widow in her weeds is as fine a model as a bride in her orange blossoms. Lay on the color as nature has laid it on—rough and coarse if you find it so. Draw the figure large, gross, and rude, if in so doing you can emancipate yourself from conventionalism. By force of refinement art perishes, like society. It must be refreshed once in a while by a return to barbarism!” Gussow’s pictures are like bold statements and frank confessions, and a better teacher for shrinking, undecided talent, either in man or woman, is not to be found. He is the most wonderful colorist of the age in Germany.
In conclusion, we ask if the day has not arrived in Germany, and even in Northern Germany, when she has a national art? Rome claimed at the beginning of the last century, that she was the jail of the German and Netherland artists. Paris boastingly says the same to-day; but we believe just persons, after examining into the condition of the various German schools, will admit that they have much peculiar to themselves, even if many of their artists have studied in Paris. (In a catalogue of two hundred names I find twenty-five only who ever received instruction in Paris.)
The International Geological Congress, which met at Bologna last year, decided upon the preparation of a geological map of Europe, and appointed an international committee to superintend the work. The map is to be published in Berlin. It will include the whole basin of the Mediterranean and all of Europe to the eastern slope of the Ural mountains. The river systems, the principal towns, the more important mountain-ranges, and the curves indicating sea depths, will be some of its features. The object of the committee will be to give a clear representation of geological conditions.