Oswald Achenbach (1827 – 1910) and his Paintings

Oswald Achenbach (1827 – 1910) German Romantic Landscape Painter

Oswald Achenbach born in Düsseldorf, he received his art education from his brother, Andreas Achenbach. His landscapes generally dwell on the rich and glowing effects of color which drew him to the Bay of Naples and the neighborhood of Rome. He also painted in the Bavarian Alps and Switzerland. From 1863 to 1872, he was professor of landscape painting at the Düsseldorf School.

His conception of nature was more ideal than that of his brother. Oswald Achenbach attempted to convey social problems through his paintings. He died in Düsseldorf of an inflammation of the lungs. He is represented at most of the important German galleries of modern art, and many of his pictures are in the United States.

During Achenbach’s lifetime, his paintings were mainly given public viewings and he was therefore viewed as a painter of “salon paintings” or “gallery ready” paintings in whose work the newer artistic movemeents were not reflected. However, as early as 1876, at the annual exhibition in the Vienna Künstlerhaus Achenbach showed an oil study and also showed his works at the “Sketches and Studies Exhibition” at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf Exponate in 1889. The reactions to these studies were different. In Vienna they were seen as evidence that Achenbach could match his younger colleagues. In Düsseldorf, a critic wondered how “wonderful paintings” could develop out of such incomplete or imperfect sketches.

Sketches, drawings, and oil studies were for Achenbach, as with other painters, primarily as memory aids for later work in the studio. In the course of his development, however, the characteristic style of the sketch increasingly found a place in his paintings. Letters to his gallery contain complaints that he had to paint “finished” works for exhibitions. He preferred to work on the underpainting, which developed the framework of the later painting, rather than on the detailed forms. However, the tastes of the market and the purchase decisions of influential critics still demanded the “perfected” or “completed” paintings, and thus so did the Galleries. At the time, the paintings of John Constable and Charles-Francois Daubigny, now highly regarded, were criticized on account of their sketchiness.