Düsseldorf school of painting

The Düsseldorf school of painting, refers to a group of painters who were educated especially in the 19th century – more precisely from 1819 to 1918 – at the Royal Prussian Academy of Arts in Dusseldorf, taught there by teachers of the Have taken private lessons or worked in the immediate vicinity of the Academy of Fine Arts.

The first academy directors Peter von Cornelius and Wilhelm von Schadow shaped the initially narrower orientation of the educational institution in the sense of the Nazarene movement and classicism. The themes they classified according to the classical genre hierarchy included those of mythology, Christianity, important historical themes, and landscape painting. The flow of romanticism in Germany was gradually spreading and making its entrance into the academy. Under the influence of the VormärzHowever, the program of the academy and its artistic environment soon expanded in the breadth of romantic and other currents, so that even a realistic, socially critical conception of art as well as landscape and genre painting gained more space and validity. Among the pictorial themes and styles of the school of painting are represented “history painting, landscape, genre and still life in all facets”, which played a role in the ” bourgeois art of the 19th century”. Through reviews, publications and exhibitions, through the distribution of works on the international art market, in particular to London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Chicago and New York, through travel, wide-ranging friendly and family connections as well as through the sometimes global academic and professional careers of her Protagonists radiated the work of the Düsseldorf School of Painting far, especially in the period between 1830 and 1870, but certainly in later decades of the 19th century. All over the world, the painters trained in Düsseldorf passed on their artistic techniques, attitudes, teaching methods, subjects, topoi and discourses, in other art academies and in the emerging artist colonies, In particular, the Düsseldorf landscape and genre painting was for many years a leader and style-forming. The international reputation of the Düsseldorf School with artistic educational institutions of Germany was again only by the Bauhaus exceeded.

The Düsseldorf School had a significant influence on the Hudson River School in the United States, and many prominent Americans trained at the Düsseldorf Academy and show the influence of the Düsseldorf School, including George Caleb Bingham, David Edward Cronin, Eastman Johnson, Worthington Whittredge, Richard Caton Woodville, William Stanley Haseltine, James McDougal Hart, Helen Searle, and William Morris Hunt, as well as German émigré Emanuel Leutze. Albert Bierstadt applied but was not accepted. His American friend Worthington Whittredge became his teacher while attending Düsseldorf.

History
On March 9, 1819, the Düsseldorf Art Academy, which had experienced a significant decline in the period of the Napoleonic Wars and the Grand Duchy of Berg, by King Frederick William III. newly founded as Royal Prussian Academy. This measure was intended not only as a mere act of Prussian art care and education policy, but was one of the primarily identity and domestic political motivated measures to satisfy the Rhenish bourgeoisie towards the Prussian crown prompted. The Rhineland were as a result of theCongress of Vienna was incorporated into Prussia in 1815. Under their predominantly Catholic and democratically minded population who confidently occurred in the new, now anchored in the West German government, because it contributed as much as any other province to its tax revenue, the feeling had spread, ” Do Prussia to be.” Far-away Berlin therefore decided to tackle this problem through a bundle of cultural and educational policies, especially in the area of higher education policy through the establishment of colleges and universities. Thus, the heads of the newly founded Academy, Peter von Cornelius, director between 1819 and 1824, and above all his successor,Wilhelm von Schadow, director from 1826 to 1859, the way to an internationally acclaimed art school, which also had a strong appeal to young artists from abroad. The academy was promoted here by the Kunstverein for the Rhineland and Westphalia, which was founded in 1829. In addition to Schadow, Karl Josef Ignatz Mosler, academy secretary and teacher of art history, played a significant role in its founding. August Weber came as a student to the Academy, became a professor and soon wooed students from other German cities and abroad. The basis of the “triumph of the Düsseldorf School of Painting” was not least the art marketwhich was largely supported by the brisk demand of the rising Rhenish and Westphalian bourgeoisie. Spectacular art purchases by the aristocracy, but also private art galleries such as the galleries of Julius Buddeus, Eduard Schulte, Bismeyer & Kraus, Paffrath, Boisserée or Johann Gottfried Böker’s Dusseldorf Gallery, which were founded in the 1830s in Düsseldorf, Cologne, Berlin and New York. provided for a constant sales and carried the call of the Dusseldorf school of painting out into the world. In Dusseldorf itself was formed from about 1835 – especially along the Alleestraße and the Ratinger road – the first gallery district of the Rhineland. Other exhibition buildings, such as the Düsseldorfer Kunsthalle, built between 1878 and 1881, supported a public presentation of the pictures. Processes of duplication over wood engraving and engraving as well as lithography created further sales opportunities for the painters. Special effects were in this context, which was founded in 1841 Association for the dissemination of religious images from the spätnazarenisch embossed Devotion ImagesDusseldorf engravers, who had been trained by Joseph von Keller, sold worldwide. In the wake of the rising art trade and media operations and the increasing demand for art prints and illustrations, the reproductive graphics specialized a number of Düsseldorf companies, such as the Kupferdruckerei Schulgen-Bettendorf, the institution of Richard Brend’amour or the company Arnz & Comp., later Elkan & Comp.

An important patron and early collector of the Düsseldorf painters was the Berlin banker Joachim Heinrich Wilhelm Wagener, from whose donation in 1861 the decisive impulse for the founding of the Berlin National Gallery emerged. In 1850, the private collector Pierre Louis Ravené opened the first publicly accessible art collection in Berlin with a significant amount of pictures from the Düsseldorf School of Painting. At the turn of the century, gallery owner and collector Alfred Flechtheim initially built his collection and art trade with works by the Düsseldorf School of Painting. Another gallery on Düsseldorf’s Königsallee, which led the Dusseldorf school of painting into the 1930s and counted the tops of the society among their customers, was founded in 1913 art shop of Julius and Max Stern. Contemporary publications of Moritz Blanc karts, Carl Gustav Carus, Anton flag, Ernst Förster, Wilhelm Fuseli, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Heinrich Heine, Mary Botham Howitt, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Carl Leberecht Always man, Adolph Kohut, Wolfgang Müller by Königswinter, Adolf Kröner, Franz Kugler, Romeo Maurenbrecher, Hermann Püttmann, Atanazy Raczyński, Adolf Rosenberg, Karl Schnaase, Johann Josef Scotti, Carl Seidel, Karl, Leopold Strauven, Ernst H. Toelken, Friedrich of Uechtritz, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, JF Wilhelmi and Karl Woermann, and later Paul Clemen, Walter Cohen and Friedrich Schaarschmidt, the painting school made known to the German-speaking educated middle class. At the world-famous Salon de Paris art exhibition in 1864, the critic Alexandre Cantaloube remarked: “You’ll find works by the Düsseldorfer Malerschule at every turn.”

The educational concept developed by Schadow and imitated in many places by the academy, which regarded teaching as a socially closely networked, hierarchically structured artistic community of directors, teachers and auxiliary teachers, master students and simple pupils, gave history painting the highest rank among the subjects. It was followed by the Portrait (ie the nude and portrait), the genre and finally the landscape painting. At the end of the 1820s, the genre painting of the Düsseldorf School was decisively stimulated by Eduard Pistorius from Berlin, who was inspired by seventeenth-century Dutch painting. was not until late Johann Wilhelm Preyer the still life painting established as a separate subject. In addition, anatomy, architecture and engraving were taught. In 1854 a professorship for sculpture was established. In 1868, a chair of art was added. It was not until 1874 that a master class was openedfor genre paintingand Wilhelm Sohn was named the first professor of genre painting at the Düsseldorf Academy. From 1903, an open-air studio furnished according to the Munich model offered animal paintingoptimized teaching conditions. Outside the official teaching of the Dusseldorf Academy, the teachers gave private lessons. In the nineteenth century, among other things, this enabled around 200 artists to train at an academic level.

As early as the mid-1830s, differences between the artists and art movements arose, which eventually led to the withdrawal of Wilhelm von Schadow and to a certain division and diversification of the institute. The reasons for the differences were of different kinds. On the one hand, Schadow’s idea of a homogenous union of artists, animated by equal ideals, could scarcely be upheld. This idea, rooted in pietism, was especially upheld by the German- Roman Lukasbund, to whom Cornelius and Schadow had belonged. Secondly, the New Prussian pupils from the Rhine Province and from Westphalia felt their opposition to the Old Prussian ones”Easterners” disadvantaged, for example, in the occupation of academic offices, in scholarships and in the sale of images. Some of them then left Dusseldorf. And finally, the multi-faceted changes in the Vormärz period, which were reflected in the social and cultural life of Prussia and its neighboring countries, led to Schadow’s reluctance to move from Nazarene art to Biedermeier and late Romantic landscape and genre painting.

A thematic focus was history painting, as the Dusseldorf exponents next to the directors Cornelius and Schadow as the painters Alfred Rethel, Hermann Stilke, Heinrich Mücke, Carl Friedrich Lessing, Emanuel Leutze, John Peter Theodor Janssen, Wilhelm Camphausen and Hermann Wislicenus emerged. The young artists of the landscape class under Johann Wilhelm Schirmer were inspired by Dutch artists like Jacob Isaacksz. van Ruisdael or Allart van Everdingen, in contrast to the circle around Schadow, which focuses on Italian prototypes. Together with the romantic Carl Friedrich Lessing Schirmer taught landscape painting in and “before nature”, the plein air painting. Frequently chosen subjects were the landscapes, stories and myths of the Lower and Middle Rhine, which were presented in romantic moods. In part, these works, such as the watercolors Caspar Scheuren of the castle Stolzenfels, the area of Rhine Romanticism assign. Markedly was also the longing for Italy of the Düsseldorf, such as Albert flame orEduard Kaempffer. It also created images that testify to an early emerging realism, because everyday image themes were selected and factually-natural portrayed. Amongst other things, the artists of the genre class dealt with topics of social problems, took a political stand on social changes and the economic recession of the 1840s, also with the means of irony and parody, as were some works by Adolph Schroedter and Johann Peter Hasenclever demonstrate. Early impressionistPainting techniques that allowed the painters to create a variety of moods and to capture dramatic light effects increasingly replaced the fine painting of Schadow’s teachings. The contrasts within the Düsseldorf School of Painting intensified. In addition to the circle of Schadow, which was formed by him and his master students, grouped – also for reasons of space shortage of the Academy – more circles, partly as private, free studio communities. The new communities, which became increasingly detached from each other, gave themselves jocular names: “New Bethlehem” or “Jerusalem” for the history painters, “Alhambra” for the landscape painters and “Siberia” for the genre painters. Although tried in the revolutionary year of 1848 founded artist association ” paint box”To consolidate the cohesion of the artist, but the tensions in the Academy were finally so great that Schadow resigned in 1859 resigned.

The 1840s to the 1860s of the Düsseldorf School of Painting were marked by a remarkable influx of foreign students, and the school’s popularity made the Düsseldorf art of domestic and immigrant artists a popular export item. Intensive links existed with artists from the United States, in particular to painters of the Hudson River School, as well as with the milieus of romantic painters from Scandinavia, the Baltic countries and Russia.

Early on, the coast, culture and population of Holland had exerted great attraction on German painters of the Düsseldorf School. In addition to museum visits, the quiet Dutch landscape and the North Sea coast were subjected to a fairly affordable study trip. The industrialization was not yet so advanced there, much original and a romantic landscape were to be discovered, because Holland was since the 17th century an almost untouched area, with picturesque windmills and a picturesque dune coast, such as the Scheveningen, where the fishing life still playing on the beach. Already in 1844 showed Rudolf Jordan motifs from Holland. There soon came to be professional and friendly contacts between Dutch artists and Dusseldorf painters, for example during common times, which were spent on the coveted motifs of Egmond aan Zee, Katwijk and Scheveningen.

The reputation of the Düsseldorf school attracted many Dutch painters in the opposite direction. The Rhine and the Rhine Romanticism with their variety of motifs contributed significantly to this. Study trips there were Dutch painters like Wijnand Nuyen, Anthonie Waldorp and Charles Rochussen. Even painters of the Hague School, their precursors and parallel currents attracted the Rheinstadt, as early as 1835 Johannes Bosboom. Jozef Israëls used his first earning through image sale to learn there. In 1865, at the wedding of the Barbizon school, the two painters Philip Sadée andJulius van de Sande Bakhuyzen to Dusseldorf, because of the international reputation of the academy as a school for history and landscape painting had attracted them. The brothers Jacobus Maris and Matthijs Maris traveled along the Rhine with stopovers in Cologne and Mannheim to Switzerland. Willem Maris and Bernardus Johannes Blommers could not resist the rough and at the same time romantic atmosphere of the Rhine. Because for studies and the late romanticPainting was at that time hardly sprawled and technically only slightly reshaped Rhine landscape almost ideal. You could walk along the touristic already developed river and in its side valleys from inn to inn. Larger distances were comfortable to travel on ships. In 1839 the Rhine was visited by Johannes-Warnardus Bilders. One of the last Dutch painters in Dusseldorf was Ludolph Berkemeier, who went to Weimar after his studies to continue his education under the landscape painter Theodor Joseph Hagen at the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Art in Weimar. Hagen himself had also studied in Düsseldorf.

The painters of the Düsseldorf School were closely intertwined with the cultural and political life of Düsseldorf and the Rhineland. They enriched the stage design of the theater, they sang in the choirs, they formed festivals and performances. For example, they designed the Historical procession 1880, with the completion of the Cologne Cathedral was celebrated. The tableaux vivants, “living pictures”, which were staged by Düsseldorf painters in their special affinity for literary and theatrical material, gained notoriety. Robert Reinick let impressions of his time in Düsseldorf into the romantic poetry of hisInclude songs of a painter with marginal drawings of his friends. Eduard Bendemann participated in the publication, Robert Schumann set it later. There was a close artistic and friendly exchange between Eduard Bendemann, Julius Hübner and the composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. The painters had between 1829 and 1831 with the “Casa Bendemann – Hübner” at Rome’s Piazza del Popolo an open, hospitable house German tourists travel entertained, the composer met there and 1833 on the occasion of the visit of the Prussian Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm in Dusseldorf together with Mendelssohn imGaleriesaal of the Academy parts of Handel’s oratorio Israel performed in Egypt.

During the German Revolution of 1848/49, many Düsseldorf painters engaged in the cause of a democratic constitution and a Greater German unity under the umbrella of a constitutional monarchy. As a symbol of this, the painter Karl Ferdinand Sohn created the monumental sculpture of a Germania made of wood, canvas and cardboard for the Feast of German Unity, which was organized on 6 August 1848 by citizens, artists and the newly founded Düsseldorfer Turnverein on Düsseldorf’s Friedrichsplatz. Several painters, such as Johann Peter Hasenclever,Philipp Hoyoll, Carl Wilhelm Huebner, Wilhelm Kleinenbroich, Gustav Adolf Koettgen, George Caleb Bingham, Carl d’Unker, Richard Caton Woodville and Christian Ludwig Bokelmann, were interested in contemporary social and social issues, which they ironically, psychologically, and realistic later also represented naturalistic way. Some of them depended on early socialist and nationalist ideals. Criticism of the political situation pointed out during the revolution of the journalist and history painterLorenz Clasen published satire magazine Düsseldorfer Monatshefte, to which many Düsseldorf painters supplied drawings. But national romantic sound and politically affirmative painting came from Dusseldorf, about 1877 to 1897 by Hermann Wislicenus created murals of the Kaisersaal in Goslar.

In 1856, Düsseldorf artists made up around a quarter of the participants in a meeting that led to the founding of the Allgemeine Deutsche Kunstgenossenschaft, the first professional association of visual artists in Germany. The artist association ” Malkasten ” had invited to this meeting to Bingen am Rhein. In later years, Düsseldorf painter Heinrich Lueg assisted in equipping and organizing international industrial and commercial exhibitions. For industrial and commercial exhibition Dusseldorf of 1902 was based on an idea of the painter Fritz Roeber and Georg Oeder the so-calledGolzheimer Island was developed for exhibition purposes and built for the exhibition of artists of the Kunstpalast, which later became the Museum Kunstpalast am Ehrenhof. In their contributions to local cultural life, the Düsseldorf painters often took up the motifs of theater, music, literature and customs in order to use them for their picturesque statements. Düsseldorf originals like Peter Muckel or fellow painters were their model.

In the course of the 19th century, as a result of increasing commercialization and increasing competitive pressure, the Düsseldorfer Malerschule made a significant turn to marketable themes such as the anecdotally humorous genre painting in salable living room formats. This earned her the reputation of decaying quality, for which the Kunstverein was responsible for the Rhineland and Westphalia because of its offensive marketing strategy. A notable representative of this commercial orientation was the painter Otto Erdmann, who settled in Dusseldorf from 1858 and almost exclusively created genre paintings in the rococo or neo – rococo style. Simultaneously with the commercialization, the use of the pseudonym J. Metzler appears on landscape paintings. To date, it is not clear which Dusseldorf artist had hidden behind the successful name, even on the causes of anonymization can only be speculated.

After the founding of the empire (1871), the population of the city of Dusseldorf increased sharply. The boom gave the city a colorful and diverse cultural life and the academy was no longer the sole focus of the artist. Many painters moved from abroad to the Rhine in order to use the city of Düsseldorf as the center of artistic creation and the art market. The Dusseldorf School of Painting as an artistically homogeneous unit no longer existed.

In 1872, the German Balte Eugène Dücker of Oswald Achenbach took over the Düsseldorf professorship for landscape painting. Through him and his students was a departure into the new era, which call the art historians as the Dücker line. Everyday life was increasingly taken up by the motives. If at first timidly, we followed the naturalism and the pre-Impressionism and the Hague School in their typical color palette. Eugène Dücker and his students, who had turned away from the traditional view of the landscape in the 1870s, pioneered a reorientation that made it even further into the 20th century.

At that time, an important influence came from Max Liebermann, who had a friendship of more than thirty years with Jozef Israëls, one of the many fathers of the Hague School. Liebermann initially took up naturalism with the typical range of the Hague School. Then came the turn to pre-impressionism.

From Brussels, at the end of the 19th century, further impetus was given to Germany. In 1884, the Société des Vingt had come together. Her declared goal was to shake off academism, to overcome traditional painting techniques and motifs. The innovators wanted to determine what they painted themselves. This revolutionary spark also spread to Dusseldorf. In 1909, some painters of the landscape class, Julius Bretz, Max Clarenbach, August Deusser and Walter Ophey, under the chairmanship of the patron Karl Ernst Osthaus founded the ” Sonderbund “, which tried to establish contact with the FrenchTo deepen impressionism. In two exhibitions, 1909 and 1912, French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists were introduced to the public for the first time in Germany, including Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso. The First World War then ended not only the contacts with French artists, but it also meant the end of the Düsseldorf School of Painting. In its time of end, the work of the Düsseldorf School of Painting was largely considered an application of the conventional.

Artworks (selection)

Portrait of Pauline Hübner by Julius Hübner, 1829
View of the Tiber to the south with the Castle S. Angelo and the Basilica of St. Peter by Rudolf Wiegmann, 1834
The Murder of the Sons of Edward IV by Theodor Hildebrandt, 1835
The Hussite sermon by Carl Friedrich Lessing, 1836
Studio scene by Johann Peter Hasenclever, 1836
Ahrlandschaft by Eduard Wilhelm Pose, 1836
Roman Campagna by Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, 1840
The Silesian weavers by Carl Wilhelm Hübner, 1844
Breaking of the sky on the coast of Sicily by Andreas Achenbach, 1847
The Siege of Carl Friedrich Lessing, 1848
War News from Mexico by Richard Caton Woodville, 1848
Mathilde Wesendonck by Karl Ferdinand son, 1850
Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze, 1851
The Captive Charger by Charles Wimar, 1854
Jolly Flatboatmen in Port by George Caleb Bingham, 1857
Monastery garden of Oswald Achenbach, after 1857
Village church with worshipers of Benjamin Vautier, 1858
The bushfire between Mount Elephant and Timboon in 1857 by Eugene von Guerard, 1859
In the emigration office (in the passport and police room before emigration) by Felix Schlesinger, 1859
Germania on the Watch on the Rhine by Lorenz Clasen, 1860
Summer night on the Rhine by Christian Eduard Böttcher, 1862
Rocky Mountains – Lander’s Peak by Albert Bierstadt, 1863
Battle of Hradec Kralove by Georg Bleibtreu, after 1866
Rest after the storm of Erik Bodom, 1871
French messenger by Emil Hünten, 1872
The Battle of the Amazon by Anselm Feuerbach, 1873
Mere rannal by Eugen Dücker, 1875
The art connoisseur of Christian Ludwig Bokelmann, 1879
Float of a fishing boat by Gregor von Bochmann, 1888
Kassel, Nice view from Louis Kolitz, around 1900
Hoesch iron and steel works in Dortmund by Eugen Bracht, 1907
Landscape in Brittany by Hans Deiker, 1910
At Wilhelmsplatz in Düsseldorf by Willy Lucas, 1917

Artist
Between 1819 and 1918 belonged to the Düsseldorf School of Painting about 4000 artists. Considered as outstanding artists of this school, listed by genre:

History painting, religious, mythological and allegorical painting
Eduard Bendemann (1811-1889)
Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901)
Peter von Cornelius (1783-1867)
Anselm Feuerbach (1829-1880)
Eduard von Gebhardt (1838-1925)
Theodor Hildebrandt (1804-1874)
Carl Wilhelm Hübner (1814-1879)
Peter Janssen d. Ä. (1844-1908)
Emanuel Leutze (1816-1868)
Alfred Rethel (1816-1859)
Wilhelm von Schadow (1788-1862)
Hermann Wislicenus (1825-1899)

Portraiture
Karl Ferdinand son (1805-1867)
Karl Rudolf Son (1845-1908)

Genre painting
George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879)
Christian Eduard Böttcher (1818-1889)
Johann Peter Hasenclever (1810-1853)
Rudolf Jordan (1810-1887)
Ludwig Knaus (1829-1910)
Adolph Schroedter (1805-1875)
Adolph Tidemand (1814-1876)
Benjamin Vautier (1829-1898)

Still-life painting
Jakob Lehnen (1803-1847)
Emilie Preyer (1849-1930)
Johann Wilhelm Preyer (1803-1889)

Landscape painting
Andreas Achenbach (1815-1910)
Oswald Achenbach (1827-1905)
Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)
Max Clarenbach (1880-1952)
Friedrich August de Leuw (1817-1888)
Eugen Dücker (1841-1916)
Hans Fredrik Gude (1825-1903)
Carl Friedrich Lessing (1808-1880)
Johann Wilhelm Schirmer (1807-1863)

Military and battle
August Beck (1823-1872)
Georg Bleibtreu (1828-1892)
Wilhelm Camphausen (1818-1885)
Emil Hünten (1827-1902)
Theodor Rocholl (1854-1933)
Christian Sell (1831-1883)

Animal and Hunting Painter
Carl Friedrich Deiker (1836-1892)
Johannes Deiker (1822-1895)
Christian Kröner (1838-1911)
Emil Volkers (1831-1905)

Source from Wikipedia