Description
Andreas Achenbach, landscape painter, pioneer of the German realist school. He studied at the Düsseldorf academy under Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, but emancipated himself from the contemporary school of landscape painters who reveled in the depiction of romantic landscapes. He was the first artist of the Düsseldorf school to paint nature itself. His pictures of the stormy North Sea, Dutch canal scenes and Rhineland villages contrasted favorably with the sentimental landscapes of his contemporaries. His brother Oswald was also a painter.