After Bürger he painted a Leonora—of course in so-called mediæval costume, in order “to avoid the unpicturesque attire in fashion during the Seven Years’ War”; and at the same time as Hildebrandt, “A Mourning Brigand,” who, in the full light of the evening sun, sits brooding on a rock over the depravity of the world. That all of them were frantically enthusiastic for the Hohenstaufens is due to the publication of Von Rainer’s History in 1823, which took a greater hold of the public than did Schiller’s History of the Thirty Years’ War, and inspired numerous dramas.

HILDEBRANDT.THE SONS OF EDWARD.
STEINBRUCK.ELVES.

Even the idyllic and touching scenes from the Old Testament and the Hebrew elegies are easily traced back to theatrical inspirations. With the exception of the frescoes of the Casa Bartholdy, the subjects of which were selected with an eye to the religious belief of their purchaser, the Nazarenes found all the subject-matter they wanted in the New Testament. The Passion of Our Lord was unable to inspire the Düsseldorf school. As compared to the few Christian paintings by W. Schadow, and the dreamy Madonnas of Deger, Ittenbach, and little Perugino Mintrop, we find a far greater number of scenes from the Old Testament, which at the time gave birth to numerous dramas. Hübner, always inclined to idyllic and melancholy scenes, painted Ruth and Boaz, his first great picture, which established his reputation. After Klingemann had utilised the whole life of Moses by turning it into a theatrically effective sequence, Christian Koehler scored a success with his “Moses hidden in the Bulrushes” and his “Finding of Moses,” and then, incited by Raupach’s “Semiramis,” abandoned his biblical heroines for Oriental ones. Theodor Hildebrandt took Tieck’s “Judith” as an inspiration for his picture of this Jewish heroine. Kehren’s “Joseph reveals Himself to his Brethren” was begun after the opera Joseph in Egypt had been performed at Düsseldorf. Bendemann, in 1832, played his trump card with his “Lament of the Jews,” now in the Cologne Museum, after Byron had made his propaganda, suggested by the sad lives of the children of Israel, and Friedrich von Uechtritz had caused his drama, The Babylonians in Jerusalem, to be performed, ending as it does with the sending of the Jews into captivity in Babylon—

“Wein’ über die die weinen fern in Babel, Ihr Tempel brach, ihr Land ward, ach! zur Fabel! Wein’! es erstart der heil ’gen Harfe Ton, Im Haus Jehovas haust der Spötter Hohn.”

And his oil-paintings of a later date, “Jeremiah on the Ruins of Jerusalem” (1834), now in the German Emperor’s collection, and the “Sending of the Jews into Captivity in Babylon” (1872), in the Berlin National Gallery, were variations on the same theme.

The productions of the Düsseldorf school were thus in perfect harmony with the programme issued by Püttmann in his book. Pictorial representations may be taken from two ranges, History or Poetry; the painter may choose an historical fact as a subject for representation, or reproduce in visible form the rhythmically shaped fancy of a stranger. History shows him figures full of expression, and even a less powerful artist will find it possible to make a true copy of them. If the painter works from poems his representations are sure to meet with approval, as they render the beautiful and the attractive in visible shape. “But the greatest success lies in store for those works which depict in harmony with the mood of the times historical or poetical performances which express human suffering in its various stages, from homely and everyday griefs to the silent sorrow of irretrievable catastrophe.”

SOHN.THE TWO LEONORAS.LESSING.THE SORROWING ROYAL PAIR.

Thus the scale of sorrow from sad melancholy to painful suffering became the speciality of the Düsseldorf school. At the foot of the scale we find the pictures which “represent the common, yet keen sorrow of parents at the death or the sad future of their children.” Lessing’s “Royal Pair” mourn the death of their daughter; Hagar grieves because she is forced to abandon her son Ishmael in the desert; Genoveva, because the roe is so long in coming to the rescue. The mortal grief of love is represented by Lessing’s “Leonora”; grief of love at separation by Sohn’s and Hildebrandt’s pictures of “Romeo and Juliet.” Even the murderers of the “Sons of Edward” mourn at their crime when they see the children—

“Girdling one another Within their innocent alabaster arms: Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, Which in their summer beauty kissed each other.”