Andreas Achenbach Art for Sale and Sold Prices

Caricaturist, Painter, b. 1815 - d. 1910

Andreas Achenbach, landscape painter, a pioneer of the German realist school. He studied at the Dusseldorf academy under Johann Wilhelm Schirmer but emancipated himself from the contemporary school of landscapists that delighted in the representation of Romantic scenery. He was the first artist of the Dusseldorf school to paint nature for its own sake. His pictures of the stormy North Sea, of Dutch canal scenes, and of Rhineland villages contrasted favourably with the sentimental landscapes of his contemporaries. His brother Oswald was also a painter. He was one of the founding members of an art association known as "Malkasten" (The Paint Box) and helped them acquire the former estate of the Jacobi family in Pempelfort, which was turned into the "Malkastenpark"; now a National Monument. He took very few students other than his brother, notably Albert Flamm, Marcus Larson, Apollinary Goravsky and William Stanley Haseltine. He received many honors throughout his life including the Order of leopold (1848), Order of Saint Stanislaus (1861) and the Order of St. Olav (1878). He became an honorary member of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1853 and a member of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in 1862. In 1885, he was named an honorary citizen of Dusseldorf.