Düsseldorf

“ The city was the residence of the Counts, afterward the Dukes, of Berg—for it was made a duchy by the Emperor Wenceslaus—from the end of the thirteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth.
In 1806 Napoleon made it the capital of a new Grand Duchy of Berg in favour of Joachim Murat. By the treaty of 1815 Düsseldorf fell to Prussia, and became the chief town of the regency of Düsseldorf, and the seat of a superior court of justice.
Occupying the site that it does, on the banks of a great waterway, the city naturally became the centre of an important commerce. ”

“ A good performance in the Düsseldorf theatre does not find its way into the world at large,—indeed, scarcely perhaps beyond the Düssels themselves; but if I succeed in thoroughly delighting and exciting both my own feelings and those of all in the house in favour of good music, that is worth something too! ”

“ Lady Caroline and Daphne and Barty between them added considerably to the gayety of Düsseldorf that summer—especially when Royces and Reeces and Duffs and such like people came there from Riffrath to lunch, or tea, or dinner, or for walks or drives or rides to Grafenberg or Neanderthal, or steamboatings to Neuss.
There were one or two other English families in Düsseldorf, living there for economy's sake, but yet of the world—of the kind that got to be friends with the Rohans ”

“ The band in the Hofgarten plays the Strauss waltzes deliciously. The shady walks, the flower-beds, the pretty vases and fountains, are enchantingly soothing and romantic on a summer's evening, under the influence of music, Rhine wine or lager. But we must bid adieu to old Dusseldorf, which we learn, with some surprise, as we turn our back upon it for the city of perfumes (Cologne) , to be a town of fifty thousand inhabitants—a fact one would never dream of, from its lack of that bustling spirit that characterizes an American town or city of that population. ”

“ Düsseldorf is one of the handsomest cities of western Germany. Its situation on the great mid-European waterway and as the junction of several main lines of railway has largely favoured its rapid growth and industrial development. It is the principal banking centre of the Westphalian coal and iron trade, and the favourite residence of the leading merchants of the lower Rhine. ”

“ The widening of the river invites the mind to expand itself likewise, and to look into the distance. We arrived at Düsseldorf, and from thence came to Pempelfort, a most delightful and beautiful resting-place, where a spacious mansion, opening upon extensive and well-kept gardens, collected [Pg 548] together a thoughtful and refined circle. The members of the family were numerous, and strangers, who found abundant enjoyment in so rich and agreeable a neighbourhood were never wanting.
In the Düsseldorf gallery my predilection for the Flemish school found plentiful nourishment. ”

“ The Düsseldorf Gallery had contained some of the finest modern paintings in the country, and had done much to keep alive the aroused interest of the public in the Arts of Design before the arrival of this, the greatest work of the acknowledged head of the Düsseldorf School; but now it is without doubt the centre of attraction to all lovers of Art on this side the water, for the great picture, whether regarded as to its intrinsic interest or its academic merits, has no rival here, and some enlightened enthusiasts say, none among modern paintings in the world. ”

“ Dusseldorf is one of those quiet, sleepy sort of towns where there is little or no excitement beyond music in the Hofgarten, or the Prussian soldiers who parade the streets; it is the quiet and pleasant home of many accomplished artists, whose paintings and whose school of art are familiar to many in America, and it is often visited by American tourists for the purpose of purchasing pictures from the easels of its artists; indeed, the guide-books dignify it with the title of the "Cradle of Rhenish Art." ”

“ The next day we had a rather dull start from Cologne along a dismal stretch of river as far as Düsseldorf. Killing time at Düsseldorf is not lively. At the café where we had tea two young subalterns of hussars came gaily in to have their coffee, and, just as they were sitting down with a cavalry swagger, there came in a major of some other corps, and the two immediately got up, saluted, and left the room. ”

“ Any one knowing his silent nature and his instinctive dislike to contact with the outer world, might certainly have feared from the first that he would find great difficulty in asserting himself as a director of large masses. And as years went on his incapacity for conducting constantly increased, as the issue showed, with the growth of an illness, which, after seeming to have been completely overcome in Dresden, returned in Düsseldorf with increasing gravity. His genius seemed constantly to shrink from the outside world into the depths of his soul. ”

“ Within recent years Düsseldorf has made remarkable progress as an industrial centre. The first place is occupied by the iron industries, embracing foundries, furnaces, engineering and machine shops, &c. ”

“ Here Düsseldorf plays a part once more in the development of art. The neighbourhood of the great manufacturing towns on the Rhine could not but lead painters to these subjects. Ludwig Bokelmann, who began by painting tragical domestic scenes—card players, and smoking shop-boys, in the style of Knaus—made the pawnshop a theme for art in 1875, and dexterously crowded into his picture all the types which popular fancy brings into association with the conception: business-like indifference, poverty ashamed, fallen prosperity, bitter need, avarice, and the love of pleasure. ”

“ The Düsseldorf artists were youths whose productions were not rooted in life, but in reading and culture; youths who always moved in good society, and who had passed through the great ordeals of life, but only on “the boards representing the universe.”
Theodor Hildebrandt became the Shakespeare of Düsseldorf. The translation of the works of the English poet by Schlegel had been published some time earlier, and Immermann, in Düsseldorf, had been the first to offer Shakespeare a home on the German stage. ”

“ In Düsseldorf like traditions live:—Deger, Ittenbach, Carl and Andreas Müller studied in Rome, and their frescoes in the Rhine chapel at Remagen were inspired by Overbeck. And specially does the mantle of the revered painter rest on his friend Eduard Steinle; important works at Strasbourg, Cologne, Frankfort, Münster, Klein‐Heubach, and Reineck, respond to the spirit of the great artist who, dead, yet speaks.
Brief is the narrative of the approaching end. The infirmities of age scarcely abated the ardent pursuit of an art dear as life itself. ”

“ There is as great a difference between Danish and Swedish art as between Copenhagen and Stockholm. Copenhagen is a homely provincial town and life is confined to home circles. In Stockholm we find the whirl of life and all the elegance of a capital. It has been styled the Paris of the North, and its art also wears this cosmopolitan aspect. Düsseldorf, where in the ’sixties most painters studied their art, appeared to latter-day artists too provincial. ”

“ Dogs, parrots, ornamental birds and animals are for sale in the Garden.
How wonderfully well built these German cities are! There is scarcely a town in England which can compare in beauty and picturesqueness with such cities as Düsseldorf, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, or Frankfort-on-the-Main, with their great wide streets avenued with trees, their artistic buildings, the lavish display in public places of statuary of a high order, and the ease with which one can find one’s way about. ”

“ Americans visiting Dusseldorf find an efficient and able cicerone in Henry Lewis, Esq., the American consul, who, from his long residence there, and being himself a Dusseldorf artist, and withal a member of their associations, and having an intimate acquaintance with artists and artist life, is a gentleman eminently qualified to aid our countrymen in their purchases of pictures, which is done with a disinterestedness and courtesy that have won for him the warmest regards of Americans who have visited the place. ”

“ Taking into consideration that Düsseldorf is not a town which is much resorted to by visitors, and that it is so close to Cologne, where it has a powerful rival, the stock of animals in the Garden is not a bad one. There is a good collection of monkeys, bears, and carnivorous animals generally. There are a fair number of rodents, a large number of deer, six bison, and a large herd of Barbary sheep. ”

“ Before leaving he received a commission [169] to compose an opera for the Munich Theatre. From Munich he travelled by Stuttgart (Nov. 7) and Heidelberg to Frankfort, and thence to Düsseldorf (Nov. 27) , to consult Immermann as to the libretto for the Munich opera, and arranged with him for one founded on [170] The Tempest. The artistic life of Düsseldorf pleased him extremely, and no doubt this visit laid the foundation for his future connection with that town.
He arrived in Paris about the middle of December, and found, of his German friends, Hiller and Franck settled there. ”

“ Norway and Sweden were fructified from Düsseldorf immediately. When Tidemand had shown the way, the academy on the Rhine was the high school for all the sons of the North during the fifties. They set to translating Knaus and Vautier into Swedish and Norwegian, and caught the tone of their originals so exactly that they almost seem more Düsseldorfian than the Düsseldorfers themselves. ”

“ Many of the great towns, including Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Leipzig, Cologne, Frankfort and Düsseldorf, are owners of land to a variable but sometimes large extent. This policy seems to have been originally adopted on economic grounds and those municipalities which bought or otherwise came into possession of town land at an early date derive a substantial revenue from it now, besides being in a position to promote housing improvement. There is comparatively little municipal building, and that as a rule only or principally for municipal servants, as at Düsseldorf, Mannheim and Nuremberg ”

“ Bierstadt is naturally an artist of great ability and large resources, and might easily have maintained a reputation as such if he had not grafted on the sensationalism of Düsseldorf a greater ambition for notoriety and money than for success in pure art. ”

“ As early as the ’sixties Björnson was president of a Norwegian society which made it its chief business to wage war against the shallow conventionalities of the Düsseldorf school. Ibsen was vice-president. In the works of the more modern artists there is not a single trace of Düsseldorf influence. Especially in the ’eighties, when naturalism was at its zenith, we find the Norwegians its boldest devotees. They portrayed life as they found it, without embellishment; they did not trouble about plastic elegance, but painted the land of their home and its people in a direct, rough-hewn style. ”

“ The only impressions they are subject to may be interpreted with the assistance of the plaster bust: honour, fidelity, love. And as sentiment and heroism are national virtues of the Germans, they are bound to show sentimental expression whilst killing their adversaries. Even the brigands are generalised lay figures. The Düsseldorf ideal of beauty aimed at a certain tender, vaguely graceful swing of outline that anxiously avoided all manly and strong, energetic and characteristic expression, all that could remind one of nature. ”

“ The military camps of Drusus had grown into settled communities, until to-day are found along the Rhine the great cities of Basel, Strasburg, Speyer, Worms, Mayence, Coblenz, Cologne, and Düsseldorf, and between them are dotted a series of cities and towns less important only in size, certainly not in the magnitude of their interest for the traveller or student, nor in their storied past. ”

“ The city of Düsseldorf began seriously to plan for its extension in 1888, and has therefore had some twenty -four years experience of this work. As a result of previous extravagance in the width and number of roads, the cost of the development of land has so increased that it is becoming less and less possible to build self-contained houses within the city for people of moderate means; and there has resulted a tendency for the people to be crowded into huge blocks of tenement and flat dwellings. ”

“ One could almost wish for something greater and more national in subject; but greater beauty, or more perfection in form, would be impossible. Just opposite to the room of the American Art-Union they have placed, with good judgment, as it seemed to me, the so-called Düsseldorf Gallery, a collection of old paintings, principally of the German school, which has been opened for the benefit and instruction of American artists and lovers of art. ”

“ A clear, realistic method was dominant in the art of Berlin. And in this respect it was as much a corrective—and one by no means to be undervalued—against the inflated sentiment of Munich as against the weak and sickly sentimentalism of Düsseldorf, with its knights and monks and noble maidens. Even Cornelius, who had been called to Berlin by Frederick William IV—that King of the Romanticists on the throne of the eminently unromantic Hohenzollerns—found himself helpless against the ruling taste. ”