Studio: international art (35.1905)

Ludwig Dettmann

flutterings, it now seems swayed by mighty rushing
winds. Dettmann has repeatedly painted this
powerful movement of the air, and has obtained
results such as had been achieved by scarcely any-
one before him. He has shown us how on the
banks of lake or river the water and the plants
seem rocking with excitement; how the forest
begins to sway to and fro, and to roar like some
huge organism ; how a puff of wind drives over
the plain, and sweeps the withered leaves of the
bare trees in a wild whirling dance across the brown
stubble-fields, so that the mass of autumnal foliage
with its yellow trail behind it swirls along like a
shower of little comets. Yet even when he turns
from the immediate study of these phenomena of
the air, Dettmann’s brush preserves this larger
sweep. His contrasts of colour seem also to
simplify themselves automatically; they are spread
over broader surfaces, and thus is imported into
his painting a decorative element hitherto strange to
it. Everything now takes on a fresh significance.
The details in the picture of actual life strip off
their purely contingent reality, and combine to-
gether to make an impression which transcends
that of the mere “ slice of nature.” The mood,
the lyrical content of the landscape and accessories,
is thereby more strongly brought out, and the
figures that give life to the picture receive an
almost symbolical character. The sower as he
strides across the field becomes a personification
of nature, ever renewing her youth ; he is, as it
were, a conscious interpreter of the unconscious
landscape, in whom everything that the latter would
express is once for all concentrated, compressed
into a striking formula. The old man who in the
gray of eventide gives his last spade-stroke, and
sinks dying to the ground, becomes a symbol of
exhausted nature in autumn, of the unbroken law
that everything living must decay and pass away.
And like creatures too of the soil, the big forms of
the Frisian girls, so often painted by Dettmann
of late years, step out to meet us. It cannot be
doubted that the observation is correct which sees,
in his broad free manner of treating rustic figures
in their brightly-coloured garb, the influence of
the Spaniard Zuloaga, who has created a special
technique for similar decorative purposes in his
pictures of gipsy life.

It must have come upon Dettmann as a great
piece of good fortune that, just when he was
occupied with this significant change, he should
have been given the task of carrying out a grand
piece of decorative work in his own quiet neigh-
bourhood : the pictures for the assembly-room of

the Rathhaus at Altona. And it is wonderful to
find with what ease he immediately adapted himself
to the field of historical painting, which, in com-
pliance with the wishes of the authorities, he had
now to enter upon. Only once before had he
ventured to treat a subject of historic import. It
was, however, no episode of the past, but an
impression of the present that was then recorded :
the icy-cold winter night when the coffin with the
body of the old Emperor William I. was conveyed
from his palace to the cathedral. The picture was
an achievement quite out of the common, a great
contrast to the empty, cold, correct, thoroughly
inartistic performances with which official art in
Prussia is usually satisfied. The lepresentation of
that memorable procession rises before our eyes
like the sombre vision of a dream. The air is
filled with whirling snowflakes borne along by the
raging wind; and in the flashing light of the
lowered torches held by the soldiers lining the route,
the carriage with the black-draped coffin becomes
visible; while behind it, battling with bent heads
against the storm, is seen the file of princes and
dignitaries who accompany the dead monarch,—at
their head the young Crown Prince, the present
Emperor,—the whole looking, in the struggling
torchlight, like some group of nocturnal shades
fantastically illumined by the flickering flames. An
historic moment was here presented with deep feel-
ing and in its full significance, and at the same time
presented in a quite definitely picturesque aspect,
with such a happy grip of the subject as to
satisfy equally the eye of the artist and the inner
susceptibilities of the patriot.

From historical painting in the narrower sense,
however,—from the representation, that is, of
interesting occurrences in past ages,—Dettmann
had hitherto held aloof. He shared the well-
founded mistrust which led the younger generation
of German artists to fear that the exacting claims
of such subjects would interfere with the purely
artistic and pictorial value of the work. When
he now took these tasks in hand he recognised the
necessity of setting aside the conventional method
hitherto applied to historical pictures, and of seek-
ing out new forms of expression in conformity with
his whole outlook on the world. And these he
found. He was the first man in Germany who
attempted the application of modern methods to
decorative architectural painting, and who boldly
employed a broader impressionistic manipulation
of the brush, and a free unacademic arrangement
of composition, in great descriptive pictures of an
historical character. The hazard was successful.