school of the lower rhine

Hans Thoma was a German painter.
In spite of his studies under various masters, his art has little in common with modern ideas, and is formed partly by his early impressions of the simple idyllic life of his native district, partly by his sympathy with the early German masters, particularly with Albrecht Altdorfer and Lucas Cranach the Elder. In his love of the details of nature, in his precise drawing of outline, and in his predilection for local coloring, he has distinct affinities with the Pre-Raphaelites.


August Levin von Wille was a German landscape painter, genre artist and illustrator.
Some of his earliest known works were, effectively, political cartoons made during the revolutions of 1848/49.


Max Clarenbach was a German painter of the first half of the twentieth century. He is known as a painter, landscape painter, genre painter and teacher and is considered one of the most important representatives of Rhenish painting of his time.
Max Clarenbach made study trips to Italy and Holland early in his career, where he formed his genre preferences and became a landscape painter. His work reflected the influence of the Hague School and the French Barbizonians. The artist skillfully depicted winter scenes and the nature of western Germany. He also painted sports and street scenes.
Clarenbach was one of the organizers of the Düsseldorf Sonderbund and taught at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art.


Hugo Mühlig was a German Impressionist painter. From 1881, he lived in Düsseldorf as a painter of landscapes and genre scenes.


Oswald Achenbach was a German painter associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting. Though little known today, during his lifetime he was counted among the most important landscape painters of Europe. Through his teaching activities, he influenced the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. His brother, Andreas Achenbach, who was twelve years older, was also among the most important German landscape painters of the 19th century. The two brothers were humorously called "the A and O of Landscapes" (a reference to their initials matching a common German reference to the Alpha and Omega).


Emanuel Leutze was an American and German painter of the mid-nineteenth century. He is known as a painter who worked in the historical genre and is considered a representative of the Düsseldorf School of painting.
Emanuel Leutze was born in Germany and moved to America at the age of nine. He received his art education in Philadelphia, then, returning to Germany, at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts. His most famous painting, "Washington Crossing the Delaware," was painted in his native country, with views of the Delaware River taken from Rhenish landscapes. Returning to the United States in 1859, the artist decorated the Washington Capitol with his historical paintings. His work is highly regarded in America for its patriotic orientation.
In Germany, Leutze was one of the founders of the Association of Artists "Malkasten", the Association of German Artists, headed the Union of Mutual Aid of Düsseldorf artists.




Thomas Struth is a German photographer who is best known for his Museum Photographs series, family portraits and black and white photographs of the streets of Düsseldorf and New York taken in the 1970s. Struth lives and works in Berlin and New York.






































