And a holiday humour, a tendency to beautify what he saw, is spread over even his genre pictures. They make one suppose that there is always sunshine in the happy land of Tyrol, that all the people are chaste and beautiful, all the young fellows fine and handsome, all the girls smart, every household cleanly and well-ordered, all married folk and children honest and kind; whereas in reality these milk-maids and woodmen are far less romantic in their conduct; and so many a townsman who avoids contact with the living people goes into raptures over them as they are pictures. With Vautier he shares this one-sidedness as well as his defective colour. Almost all his pictures are hard, dry, and diffident in colouring, but, as with Vautier, the man atones for the painter. From Defregger one asks for no qualities of colour and no realistic Tyrolese, since he has rendered himself in his pictures, and gives one a glimpse into his own heart; and a healthy, genial, and kindly heart it is. His idealism is not born of laboriously acquired principles of beauty; it expresses the temperament of a painter—a temperament which unconsciously sees the people through a medium whereby they are glorified. A rosy glow obscures sadness, ugliness, wretchedness, and misery, and shows only strength and health, tenderness and beauty, fidelity and courage. He treasured sunny memories of the cheerful radiance which rested on his home in the hour of his return; he painted the joy which swelled in his own breast as he beheld again the rocks of his native country, heard once more the peaceful chime of its Sabbath bells. And this is what gives his works their human, inward truth, little as they may be authentic documents as to the population of Tyrol.

Later this will be more impartially recognised than it possibly can be at present. The larger the school of any artist, the more it will make his art trivial; and thus for a time the originality of the master himself seems to be mere trifling. The Tyrolese were depreciated in the market by Defregger’s imitators; only too many have aped his painting of stiff leather breeches and woollen bodices, without putting inside them the vivid humanity which is so charming in a genuine Defregger. But his position in the history of art is not injured by this. He has done enough for his age; he has touched the hearts of many by his cheerful, fresh, and healthy art, and he would be certain of immortality had he thrown aside his brush altogether from the time when the progress of painting left him in the rear.

With Defregger, the head of the Tyrolese school, Gabl and Mathias Schmidt, standing at a measurable distance from him, may find a well-merited place. Mathias Schmidt, born in the Tyrolese Alps in the same year as Defregger, began with satirical representations of the local priesthood. A poor image-carver has arrived with his waggon at an inn, on the terrace of which are sitting a couple of well-fed ecclesiastics, and by them he is ironically called to account as he offers a crucifix for sale. A young priest, as an austere judge of morals, reproves a pair of lovers who are standing before him, or asks a young girl such insidious questions at the bridal examination that she lowers her eyes, blushing. His greatest picture was “The Emigration of the Zillerthal Protestants.” Amongst later works, without controversial tendencies, “The Hunter’s Greeting” and “The Lathered Parson” may be named. The latter is surprised by two pretty girls while shaving. To these may be added “The Parson’s Patch,” a picture of a robust housekeeper hastily mending a weak spot in the pastor’s inexpressibles just before service.

Shortly after Defregger had painted his picture of “Speckbacher,” Alois Gabl came forward with his “Haspinger preaching Revolt,” and followed it up by smaller pictures with a humorous touch, representing a levy of recruits in Tyrol, the dance at the inn interrupted by the entrance of the parson, magnates umpiring at the shooting butts, a bar with laughing girls, and the like.

In 1870, Eduard Kurzbauer, who died young, in his “Fugitives Overtaken” executed a work representing an entire class of painted illustrations. A young man who has eloped with a girl is discovered with her by her mother in a village inn. The old lady is looking reproachfully at her daughter, who is overwhelmed by shame and penitence; the young man is much moved, the old servant grave and respectful, the young landlady curious, and the postilion who has driven the eloping pair has a sly smirk. Elsewhere Kurzbauer, who is a fresh and lively anecdotist, painted principally episodes, arraying his figures in the peasant garb of the Black Forest: a rejected suitor takes a sad farewell of a perverse blonde who disdains his love; or the engagement of two lovers is hindered by the interference of the father.

Cassell & Co.
DEFREGGER.ANDREAS HOFER APPOINTED GOVERNOR OF THE TYROL.

Hugo Kauffmann, the son of Hermann Kauffmann, planted himself in the interior of village taverns or in front of them, and made his dressed-up models figure as hunters, telling incredible tales, dancing to the fiddle, or quarrelling over cards.