Realism begins in German art with the entry of these Northern painters into Düsseldorf and Munich. They were less affected by æsthetic prejudices, and fresher and healthier than the Germans. Gurlitt was specially their intellectual leader, the soul, the driving force of the great movement which now followed. Roused by him, _Andreas Achenbach_ emancipated himself from the landscape of style, and, in the years from 1835 to 1839, painted Norwegian pictures even before he knew Norway. Roused by Gurlitt, Achenbach set forth upon the pilgrimage thither, the journey which was a voyage of discovery for German landscape painting. Until Achenbach's death in 1905 he yearly exhibited works which were no longer in touch with the surrounding efforts of younger men, and there was an inclination to make little of his importance as a pioneer. What is wanting in his pictures is artistic zeal; what he seems to have too much of is routine. Andreas Achenbach is, as his portrait shows, a man of great acuteness. From his clear, light blue eyes he looks sharply and sagaciously into the world around; his short, thick-set figure, proud and firm of carriage, in spite of years, bears witness to his tough energy. His forehead, like Menzel's, is rather that of an architect than of a poet; and his pictures correspond to his outward appearance. Each one of his earlier good pictures was a battle fought and won. Realism incarnate, a man from whom all visionary enthusiasm lay at a world-wide distance, he conquered nature by masculine firmness and unexampled perseverance. He appears as a _maître-peintre_, a man of cool, exact talent with a clear and sober vision. The chief characteristic of his organism was his eminent capacity for appreciating the artistic methods of other artists, and adapting what was essential in them to his own manner of production. One breathes more freely before the works of the masters of Barbizon, and merely sees good pictures in those of Achenbach. The former are captivating by their intimate penetration, where he is striking by his bravura of execution. His landscapes have no chance inspiration, no geniality. Everything is harmonised for the sake of pictorial effect. The structure and scaffolding are of monumental stability. Yet fine as his observation undoubtedly is, he has never surprised the innermost working of nature, but merely turned her to account for the production of pictures. For the French artists colour is the pure expression of nature and of her inward humour, but for Achenbach it is just the means for attaining an effectiveness similar to that of the Dutch. Penetrating everything thoroughly with those sparkling blue eyes of his, he learnt to render conscientiously and firmly the forms of the earth and its outward aspect, but the moods of its life appealing to the spirit like music were never disclosed to him. The paintings of the Dutch attracted him to art, not the impulse to give token to his own peculiar temperament.