German painting in the nineteenth century took the same road. Eighty years ago foreign troops, and the extravagantly "picturesque and often ragged uniforms of the Republican army, the characteristic and often wild physiognomies of the French soldiers," gave artists their first fresh and variously hued impressions. Painters of military subjects make their studies, not in the antiquity class of the academy, but upon the parade-ground and in the camp. Later, when the warlike times were over, they passed from the portrayal of soldiers to that of rustics; and so they laid the foundation on which future artists built. [Illustration: _Hanfstaengl._ HESS. THE RECEPTION OF KING OTTO IN NAUPLIA.] In Berlin Franz Krüger and in Munich Albrecht Adam and Peter Hess were figures of individual character, belonging to the spiritual family of Chodowiecki and Gottfried Schadow; and, entirely undisturbed by classical theories or romantic reverie, they penetrated the life around them with a clear and sharp glance. They lacked, indeed, the temperament to comprehend either the high poetic tendencies of the old Munich school or the sentimental enthusiasm of the old Düsseldorf. On the other hand, they were unhackneyed artists, facing facts in a completely unprejudiced spirit: entirely self-reliant, they refused to form themselves upon any model derived from the old masters; they had never had a teacher and never enjoyed academic instruction. This naïve straightforwardness makes their painting a half-barbaric product; something which has been allowed to run wild. But in a period of archæological resuscitations, pedantic brooding over the past and slavish imitation of the ancients, it seems, for this very reason, the first independent product of the nineteenth century. As vigorous, matter-of-fact realists they know nothing of more delicate charms, but represented fact for all it was worth and as honestly and conscientiously as was humanly possible. They are lacking in the distinctively pictorial character, but they are absolutely untouched by the Classicism of the epoch. They never dream of putting the uniforms of their warriors upon antique statues. It is this downright honesty that renders their pictures not merely irreplaceable as documents for the history of civilisation, and in spite of their unexampled frigidity, hardness, and gaudiness, lends them, even from the standpoint of art, a certain innovating quality. In a pleasantly written autobiography _Albrecht Adam_ has himself described the drift of historical events which made him a painter of battles.