"Andreas Hofer going to his Death" was his first concession to Piloty. Defregger had become professor at the Munich Academy, and was entered in the directory as "historical painter." The figures were therefore painted life size; and in the grouping and the choice of the "psychic moment" the style aimed at "grand painting." The result was the same emptiness which blusters through the historical pictures of the school of Delaroche, Gallait, and Piloty. The familiar stage effect and stilted passion has taken the place of simple and easy naturalism. Nor was he able to give life to the great figures of a large canvas as he had done in the smaller picture of the "Return of the Victors." This is true of "The Peasant Muster" of 1883--which represented the Tyrolese, assembled in an arms manufactory, learning that the moment for striking had arrived--and of the last picture of the series, "Andreas Hofer receiving the Presents of the Emperor Francis in the Fortress of Innsbruck." All the great Hofer pictures, which in earlier days were honoured as his best performances, have done less for his memory than for that of the sturdy hero. The _genre_ picture was Defregger's vocation. There lay his strength, and as soon as he left that province he renounced his fine qualities. [Illustration: _Cassell & Co._ DEFREGGER. SISTER AND BROTHERS.] [Illustration: _Hanfstaengl._ DEFREGGER. THE PRIZE HORSE.] And a holiday humour, a tendency to beautify what he saw, is spread over even his _genre_ pictures. They make one suppose that there is always sunshine in the happy land of Tyrol, that all the people are chaste and beautiful, all the young fellows fine and handsome, all the girls smart, every household cleanly and well-ordered, all married folk and children honest and kind; whereas in reality these milk-maids and woodmen are far less romantic in their conduct; and so many a townsman who avoids contact with the living people goes into raptures over them as they are pictures. With Vautier he shares this one-sidedness as well as his defective colour. Almost all his pictures are hard, dry, and diffident in colouring, but, as with Vautier, the man atones for the painter. From Defregger one asks for no qualities of colour and no realistic Tyrolese, since he has rendered himself in his pictures, and gives one a glimpse into his own heart; and a healthy, genial, and kindly heart it is. His idealism is not born of laboriously acquired principles of beauty; it expresses the temperament of a painter--a temperament which unconsciously sees the people through a medium whereby they are glorified. A rosy glow obscures sadness, ugliness, wretchedness, and misery, and shows only strength and health, tenderness and beauty, fidelity and courage. He treasured sunny memories of the cheerful radiance which rested on his home in the hour of his return; he painted the joy which swelled in his own breast as he beheld again the rocks of