GERMAN PAINTING IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
During the early and middle periods of the practice of art in Germany the great distinctiveness that marked the individual independence of each kingdom, principality, dukedom, county, or free city of Germany gave local importance to several separate schools of art. But when the remark able brilliancy and activity of these schools—which included such men as Vischer, Cranach, Holbein, and Diirer—began to decline, a transition period followed exhibiting less earnestness and seriousness and far less originality. This inert epoch in the history of German painting seems to have reached an extreme about the middle of the eighteenth century— the very period when French painting was in a depressed condition, while that of Great Britain, full of vigor, was approaching its zenith. Un doubtedly, artists of ability were found in Germany at that time, but they were inferior to both their predecessors and their successors; they founded no schools, and did little to advance the progress of the fine arts.
Pal/ha_ar of the most original of these painters who connect the eighteenth with the previous century was Balthazar Delmer, born at Hamburg in 7685 and died in 1747. What was original in the art of Delmer was his technical style, for there was little that was novel in his color or ideas; perhaps as a portrait-painter he found but slight room for novelty in the latter. The peculiarity of Denver's style lay in the extreme minuteness he employed in representing details. While he succeeded in obtaining a lifelike portrait agreeable from whatever point viewed, he painted every wrinkle and wrinklet, every pore and undula tion of the skin, every tint, even the down on the skin, and apparently every hair. He made every hair look round. Whether he used a mag nifying-glass is not known, but his works must be examined—indeed, must be studied—with such a glass in order to discover the almost super natural truth of every detail in his portraits. He preferred to paint old, wrinkled, or bronzed faces roughened by time and experience, rather than the smooth, fair faces of the young. The extreme time and patience required for such work obliged him to confine his portraits simply to the representation of the head. Denner painted the portraits of Peter III. of
Russia, Augustus II. of Poland, and Frederick IV. of Denmark—of the latter, several times. A Head of an Old Woman was painted for the emperor Charles VI., who paid him forty-seven hundred florins.
Christian Ernst by a number of inferior artists, we come to Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, who was born at Weimar in 1712 and died in 1774. In his way Dietrich, without being a great painter, was as curious an example of eccentricity in art as Denner. This fact does not appear to have made the impression at the time that it has made since his death, for he was very successful in winning popularity and was early appointed court-painter to the king of Saxony. Dietrich's eccentricity lay in the fact that he seemed incapable of designing a strictly original composition. His subjects were usually genre, and lie deliber ately copied the works of other painters, chiefly of the Dutch and Flemish schools. The works of Rembrandt received his special attention. He painted with facility, showing excellent technical knowledge and making sufficient changes in his copy of the picture whose 1110tif he borrowed to prevent the two works front being strictly identical. It does not appear that there was any concealment or fraud on the part of the artist in prac tising this sort of art, but the popularity he was able to obtain tinder such circumstances affords a fair measure of the low state of the art of paint ing in Germany at that period.
Martin von Knoller, born in the Tyrol in 1725 and died in 1804, a subject- and history-painter, was one of the best German artists of the eighteenth century. The son of an artist, he was sent to Rome, where he studied under Raphael Mengs (q. z'.); thence he went to Venice, where lie passed the remainder of his life, although most of the results of his art career are to be seen in the churches of Wfirtemberg and the Tyrol. He excelled in fresco-painting, in which he showed more facility than in oil. At Munich there is an AssumItion of the Vrgin by Knoller that is cred itable to his reputation. His style was characterized by a flowing brush and spirited composition.