MORGENSTERN.A PEASANT COTTAGE (ETCHING).

Caspar David Friedrich, that singular painter who carried on his artistic work in Greifswald, and later in Dresden also, is, if anything, almost more original and startling. Like Dahl, he studied under Eckersberg, at the Academy in Copenhagen, and it was this elder artist who opened his eyes to nature, in which he saw moods and humours as romantic as they were modern. His work was not seen in a right light until shown in the German Centenary Exhibition of 1906, when his just place was first, in the history of art, assigned to him.

For Munich a similar importance was won by the Hamburg painter Christian Morgenstern, who, like all artists of this group, imitated the Dutch in the tone of his colour, though as a draughtsman he remained a fresh and healthy son of nature. Even what he accomplished in all naïveté between 1826 and 1829, through direct study of Hamburg landscape, is something unique in the German production of that age. His sketches and etchings of these years assure him a high place amongst the earliest German “mood” painters, and show that as a landscapist he had at that time made the furthest advance towards simplicity and intimacy of feeling. A journey to Norway, undertaken in 1829, and a sojourn at the Copenhagen Academy, where he worked up his Norwegian studies, only extended his ability without altering his principles; and when he came to Munich in the beginning of the thirties his new and personal intuition of nature made a revolution in artistic circles. The landscape painters learnt from him that Everdingen, Ruysdael, and Rembrandt were contemporaries of Poussin, that foliage need not be an exercise of style, and is able properly to indicate the nature of the tree. He discovered the beauty of the Bavarian plateau for the Munich school.

Even the first picture that he brought with him from Hamburg displayed a wide plain shadowed by clouds—a part of the Lüneberg heath—and to this type of subject he remained faithful even in later days. Himself a child of the plains, he sought for kindred motives in Bavaria, and found them in rich store on the shore of the Isar, in the quarries near Polling, at Peissenberg, and in the mossy region near Dachau. His pictures have not the power of commanding the attention of an indifferent spectator, but when they have been once looked into they are seen to be poetic, quiet, harmless, sunny, and thoughtful. He delighted in whatever was ordinary and unobtrusive, the gentle nature of the wood, the surroundings of the village, everything homely and familiar. If Rottmann revelled in the forms of Southern nature, Morgenstern abided by his native Germany; where Lessing only listened to the rage of the hurricane, Morgenstern hearkened to the quiet whisper of the breeze. The shadows of the clouds and the radiance of the sun lie over the dark heath, the moonlight streams dreamily over the quiet streets of the village, the waves break, at one moment rushing noisily and at another gently caressing the shore. Later, when he turned to the representation of the mountains, he lost the intimacy of feeling which was in the beginning peculiar to him. In mountain pictures, often as he attempted ravines, waterfalls, and snowy Alpine summits, he never succeeded in doing anything eminently good. These pictures have something petty and dismembered, and not the great, simple stroke of his plains and skies.

What Morgenstern was for Munich, Ludwig Gurlitt was for Düsseldorf—the most eminent of the great Northern colony which migrated thither in the thirties. His name is not to be found in manuals, and the pictures of his later period which represent him in public galleries seldom give a full idea of his importance. After a journey to Greece in 1859 he took to a brown tone, in which much is conventional. Moreover, his retired life—he resided from 1848 to 1852 in a Saxon village, and from 1859 to 1873 in Siebleben, near Gotha—contributed much to his being forgotten by the world. But the history of art which seeks operative forces must do him honour as the first healthy, realistic landscape painter of Germany, and—still more—as one who opened the eyes of a number of younger painters who have since come to fame.

Gurlitt was a native of Holstein, and, like Morgenstern, received his first instruction in Hamburg, where at that time Bendixen, Vollmer, the Lehmanns, and the Genslers formed an original group of artists. After this, as in the case of Morgenstern also, there followed a longer sojourn in Norway and Copenhagen. In Düsseldorf, where he then went, a Jutland heath study made some sensation on his arrival. It was the first landscape seen in Düsseldorf which had not been composed, and Schadow is said to have come to Gurlitt’s studio, accompanied by his pupils, to behold the marvel. In 1836 he migrated to Munich, where Morgenstern had worked before him, and here he produced a whole series of works, which reveals an artist exceedingly independent in sentiment, and one who even preserves his individuality in the presence of the Dutch. His pictures were grey in tone, and not yellowish, like those of the Dutch; moreover, they were less composed and less “intelligently” dressed out with accessories than the pictures of Dahl; they were glances into nature resulting from earnest, realistic striving. Even when he began to paint Italian pictures, as he did after 1843, he preserved a straightforward simplicity which was not understood by criticism in that age, though it makes the more sympathetic appeal at the present day. The strength of his realism lay, as was the case with all artists of those years, rather in drawing; but at times he reaches, even in painting, a remarkable clearness and delicacy, which at one time verges on the silver tone of Canaletto, at another on the fine grey of Constable.

GURLITT.ON THE SABINE MOUNTAINS.

Realism begins in German art with the entry of these Northern painters into Düsseldorf and Munich. They were less affected by æsthetic prejudices, and fresher and healthier than the Germans. Gurlitt was specially their intellectual leader, the soul, the driving force of the great movement which now followed. Roused by him, Andreas Achenbach emancipated himself from the landscape of style, and, in the years from 1835 to 1839, painted Norwegian pictures even before he knew Norway. Roused by Gurlitt, Achenbach set forth upon the pilgrimage thither, the journey which was a voyage of discovery for German landscape painting.

Until Achenbach’s death in 1905 he yearly exhibited works which were no longer in touch with the surrounding efforts of younger men, and there was an inclination to make little of his importance as a pioneer. What is wanting in his pictures is artistic zeal; what he seems to have too much of is routine. Andreas Achenbach is, as his portrait shows, a man of great acuteness. From his clear, light blue eyes he looks sharply and sagaciously into the world around; his short, thick-set figure, proud and firm of carriage, in spite of years, bears witness to his tough energy. His forehead, like Menzel’s, is rather that of an architect than of a poet; and his pictures correspond to his outward appearance. Each one of his earlier good pictures was a battle fought and won. Realism incarnate, a man from whom all visionary enthusiasm lay at a world-wide distance, he conquered nature by masculine firmness and unexampled perseverance. He appears as a maître-peintre, a man of cool, exact talent with a clear and sober vision. The chief characteristic of his organism was his eminent capacity for appreciating the artistic methods of other artists, and adapting what was essential in them to his own manner of production. One breathes more freely before the works of the masters of Barbizon, and merely sees good pictures in those of Achenbach. The former are captivating by their intimate penetration, where he is striking by his bravura of execution. His landscapes have no chance inspiration, no geniality. Everything is harmonised for the sake of pictorial effect. The structure and scaffolding are of monumental stability. Yet fine as his observation undoubtedly is, he has never surprised the innermost working of nature, but merely turned her to account for the production of pictures. For the French artists colour is the pure expression of nature and of her inward humour, but for Achenbach it is just the means for attaining an effectiveness similar to that of the Dutch. Penetrating everything thoroughly with those sparkling blue eyes of his, he learnt to render conscientiously and firmly the forms of the earth and its outward aspect, but the moods of its life appealing to the spirit like music were never disclosed to him. The paintings of the Dutch attracted him to art, not the impulse to give token to his own peculiar temperament. He thinks more of producing pictures which may equal those of his forerunners in their merits than of rendering the impression of nature which he has himself received. His intelligence quickens at the study of the rules and theories set up by the Dutch, and he seeks for spots in nature where he may exercise these principles, but remains chill at the sight of sky and water, trees and mountains. It is not mere love of nature that has guided his brush, but a refined calculation of pictorial effect; and as he never went beyond this endeavour after rounded expression, as it was understood by the Dutch, though he certainly set German landscape free from a romantic subjection to style like Schirmer’s, he never led it to immediate personal observation of nature. It is not the fragrance of nature that is exhaled from his pictures, but the odour of oil and varnish; and as the means he made use of to attain his effects never alter, the result is frequently conventional and methodic.

ACHENBACH.SEA COAST AFTER A STORM.