A great number of pupils were encouraged by him to gain
such a thorough mastery of every detail of technique as to be
enabled to paint pictures that were thoroughly good in workmanship,
irrespective of genre or anecdote. Among these, W.
Trübner (b. 1851) stands pre-eminently as a painter. His works
during the ’seventies are among the best painting done at
Munich during that period; they are full and rich in colour,
broad and bold in their treatment of the subject. A contemporary
of his was Bruno Piglhein (b. 1848), a German Chaplin
in this Courbet group, not heavy and matter-of-fact, but bold
and witty. He revived the art of pastel painting and pointed
the way to a new style in panoramic and decorative painting,
whilst infusing beauty and grace into all his works.
The movement in applied arts which began at this time is also important. The revival of the German Empire led to a renaissance in German taste. The “old German dwelling-rooms,” which now became the fashion, could only be hung with pictures in keeping with the style of the old masters, and this entailed a closer study and imitation of their works than had hitherto been customary. Wilhelm Diez (b. 1839) at the head of the group, was as well acquainted with the epoch from Dürer and Holbein to Ostade and Rembrandt as any art historian. In Harburger (b. 1846) Adrian Brouwer lived once more; and in Löfftz (b. 1845) Quintin Matsys. Claus Meyer (b. 1846) imitated all the artistic tricks of Pieter de Hooch and Van der Neer of Delft. Holbein’s costume studies were at first models for Fritz August Kaulbach (b. 1850). Later, he extended his studies to Dolci and Van Dyck, to Watteau and Gainsborough. Adolf Lier (1827–1882) applied the beauty of tone beloved by the old masters to landscape. Von Lenbach’s works show the zenith of old-master talent in Germany. He had educated himself as a copyist of classical masterpieces, and passed through a schooling in the study of old masters such as none of his contemporaries had enjoyed. The copies which, as a young man, he made for Count Schach in Italy and Spain are among the best the brush has ever accomplished. Titian and Rubens, Velazquez and Giorgione, were imitated by him with equal success. In like manner he gave to his own works their distinguished old-master charm. More than all other painters of historical subjects, Lenbach enjoys the distinction of having been the historian of his epoch. He gave the great men of the era of the emperor William I. the form in which they will live in German history, and beauty of colour is blended in all these pictures with their brilliant evidence of thought. The aspirations of a whole generation to restore the technique of the old masters found their realization in Lenbach.
Such was the position of things when there was imported from France the desire to paint light and sun. It was argued that the views which the old masters held concerning colour were in glaring contradiction to what the eye actually saw. The old masters, it was said, paid particular attention to the conditions of light and shade under which they did their work. The golden character of the Italian Renaissance was traceable to the old cathedrals lighted by stained-glass windows. The light and shade of the Netherlands were in keeping with the light and shadow of the artists’ studios lighted by little panes, and due partly to the fact that their pictures were intended to hang in dreamy, brown panelled chambers. But was this golden or brown light suitable for the 19th century? Were we not illogical, when for the sake of reproducing the tones of the old masters, we darkened our studios and shut out the daylight by coloured glass windows and heavy curtains? Was not light one of the greatest acquisitions of recent times? When the Dutch painted the world used only little panes of glass. Now the daylight streamed into our rooms through great white sheets of crystal. When our grandfathers lived there were only candles and oil lamps. Now we had gas and electric light. Instead of imitating the old masters, let us paint the colouristic charms that were unknown to them. Let us do honour to the new marvels of colour. With such arguments as were advanced in France, did artists in Germany adopt the plein-air and abandon older methods; and a development like that which took place in France after the days of Manet ensued in Germany also. Daylight, which had so long been kept down, was now to be reproduced as clear and bright. After the art of painting strong effects full of daylight had been grappled with, other and more difficult problems of light effects were attempted. After the full blaze of sunshine had been successfully reproduced, such effects as the haze of early morning, the sultry vaporous atmosphere of the thunderstorm, the mysterious night, the blue-grey dawn, the delicate colours of variegated Chinese lanterns, the scintillation of gas and lamplight, and the dreamy twilight in the interior were dealt with.
Max Liebermann (b. 1849) was the first to join the new departure. In Paris he had learnt technique. Holland, the country of fogs, inspired him with the love for atmospheric effects, and its scenes of simple life provided him with many subjects. Perhaps the “Net Menders” in the Hamburg Kunsthalle is most typical of Liebermann’s art. Frank Skarbina (b. 1849), who was the second to join the new movement in Berlin, proceeded to studies of twilight and artificial light effects.
Hans Herrman (b. 1858), who settled himself on quays and ports; Hugo Volgel, who endeavoured to utilize scenes from contemporary life for decorative pictures; and the two landscape painters, Ludwig Dettmann (b. 1865) and Walther Leistikow (b. 1865), are other representatives of modern Berlin art. Carlsruhe, in the ’eighties, produced some modern pictures of great merit, when Gustav Schönleber (b. 1851) and Herrmann Baisch (b. 1846) showed daintily conceived pictures of Dutch landscapes. In later years Count Leopold Kalckreuth (b. 1855), whose powerfully conceived representations of peasant life belong to the best productions of German realism, and Victor Weishaupt (b. 1848), the animal painter, removed thence to Stuttgart, the residence also of Otto Reiniger (b. 1863), a landscape painter of great originality. At Dresden we find Gotthard Kuehl (b. 1850), long domiciled in Paris, who was one of the first to accept Manet’s teaching. In North Germany, Worpswede became a German Barbizon; Ende (b. 1860), Vogeler, and Vinnen (b. 1863) also worked there. In Weimar, two landscape painters of great refinement must be mentioned—Theodor Hagen (b. 1842) and Gleichen-Russwurm (b. 1866). As far back as the ’seventies they rendered ploughed fields, hills enveloped in thin vapour at sunrise, waving fields of corn, and apple trees in full bloom trembling in the rays of the evening glow with a delicate understanding of natural effects.
But Munich still remains the headquarters of German art, which is there the first of all interests and pervades all circles. Almost all those who are working in other German towns receive in that city their inspirations and have indeed remained its citizens in heart. The international exhibitions have given a great European tone and impulse to creative work. Among the elders, Albert von Keller (b. 1841) has perhaps the greatest originality. He is one of those who practised the art of the brush as long ago as the ’seventies, and painted, not for the sake of historical subjects or for genre, but for the sole love of his art. He painted everything, never restricted himself to any fixed programme, and never became trivial. He is perhaps in Germany the only painter of female portraits who has caught in his pictures a little of the charm that betrays itself in the expression and movements of the modern woman. In the works of Freiherr von Habermann (b. 1849) this refinement of sentiment, as expressed in colour, is combined with a still more decided shade of eccentricity. Already in his “Child of Sorrow,” which hangs in the National Gallery at Berlin, he struck that painful chord that always remained his favourite. However different the subjects he has painted, a morbid note pervades them all.
In Heinrich Zügel (b. 1850), the Munich school possesses an animal painter who rivals the great Frenchmen in original power. Ludwig Dill (b. 1848), whom one must still count as “Dachauer,” in spite of his migration to Carlsruhe, had for some time past been famous as a painter of Venice, the lagoons and Chioggia, when the impressionist movement became for him the starting-point of a new development. He strove for still brighter light,
