In Düsseldorf the reaction against the prevailing sentimentality necessarily gave an impulse to art on these humorous lines. When it seemed as if the mournfulness of the thirties would never be ended, _Adolf Schroedter_, the satirist of the band of Düsseldorf artists in those times, broke the spell when he began to parody the works of the "great painters." When Lessing painted "The Sorrowing Royal Pair," Schroedter painted "The Triumphal Procession of King Bacchus"; when Hermann Stilke produced his knights and crusaders, Schroedter illustrated _Don Quixote_ as a warning; and when Bendemann gave the world "The Lamentation of Jeremiah" and "The Lamentation of the Jews," Schroedter executed his droll picture "The Sorrowful Tanners," in which the tanners are mournfully regarding a hide carried away by the stream. Since he was a humorist, and humour is rather an affair for drawing than painting, the charming lithographs, "The Deeds and Opinions of Piepmeyer the Delegate," published in conjunction with Detmold, the Hanoverian barrister, and author of the _Guide to Connoisseurship_, are perhaps to be reckoned as his best performances. _Hasenclever_ followed the dilettante Schroedter as a delineator of the "stolid Peter" type, and painted the "Study" and similar pictures for Kortum's _Jobsiade_ with great technical skill, and, at the same time, with little humour and much complacency. By the roundabout route of illustration artists were gradually brought more directly into touch with life, and painted side by side with melodramatic brigands, rustic folk, or a student at a tavern on the Rhine, absurd people reading the newspapers, comic men sneezing, or the smirking Philistine tasting wine. [Illustration: KIRNER. THE FORTUNE TELLER.] [Illustration: ENHUBER. THE PENSIONER AND HIS GRANDSON.] [Illustration: JACOB BECKER. A TEMPEST.]