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.
In this painting, dating from Achenbach's early adulthood, the memory of his voyage to the Scandinavian North Sea coast is still fresh. The churning drama of the waves and the shipwreck in the foreground reflect a heightened emotion that belies the artist's realist training in Munich. The birds flying through the storm contrast with humanity's helplessness in the face of nature.