The productions of the Düsseldorf school were thus in perfect harmony with the programme issued by Püttmann in his book. Pictorial representations may be taken from two ranges, History or Poetry; the painter may choose an historical fact as a subject for representation, or reproduce in visible form the rhythmically shaped fancy of a stranger. History shows him figures full of expression, and even a less powerful artist will find it possible to make a true copy of them. If the painter works from poems his representations are sure to meet with approval, as they render the beautiful and the attractive in visible shape. "But the greatest success lies in store for those works which depict in harmony with the mood of the times historical or poetical performances which express human suffering in its various stages, from homely and everyday griefs to the silent sorrow of irretrievable catastrophe." [Illustration: SOHN. THE TWO LEONORAS.] Thus the scale of sorrow from sad melancholy to painful suffering became the speciality of the Düsseldorf school. At the foot of the scale we find the pictures which "represent the common, yet keen sorrow of parents at the death or the sad future of their children." Lessing's "Royal Pair" mourn the death of their daughter; Hagar grieves because she is forced to abandon her son Ishmael in the desert; Genoveva, because the roe is so long in coming to the rescue. The mortal grief of love is represented by Lessing's "Leonora"; grief of love at separation by Sohn's and Hildebrandt's pictures of "Romeo and Juliet." Even the murderers of the "Sons of Edward" mourn at their crime when they see the children-- "Girdling one another Within their innocent alabaster arms: Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, Which in their summer beauty kissed each other."