In the context of Hans Gude, explore the As a student of the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf.
Gude was finally accepted into the academy in the autumn of 1842 and joined Schirmer's landscape painting class where he made quick progress. The landscape painting class at the academy was new at the time, having been founded in 1839 as a counterpart to the more long standing figure painting class. At the time figure painting was considered a more prestigious genre than landscape painting as it was thought only through painting the human body could true beauty be expressed.Gude, along with most of the class of twelve, received a grade of "good" his first semester and was described as "talented". On his report card for the 1843–44 school year he was the only student to be described as "very talented", and the report for his fourth year said that he "paints Norwegian scenery in a truthful and distinctive manner".While Gude was a student, two different trends in landscaping were developing at the academy: a romantic trend and a classical trend. The romanticists depicted wild, untamed wildernesses with dark forests, soaring peaks, and rushing water to capture the terrifying and overpowering aspects of nature. They used rich, saturated colors with strong contrast of light and shadow. The classicists were more interested in recreating landscapes from the heroic or mythical past and often set them in the midst of religious or historical events. The classicists focused on lines and clarity in their compositions. It was through Achenbach – Gude's first teacher upon arriving in Düsseldorf – that he was exposed to the romanticist tradition, while it was through his classes with and later time teaching for Schirmer that he was exposed to the classicist traditions.In 1827 Schirmer and Carl Friedrich Lessing founded a Society for Landscape Composition that would meet a few times each year at Schirmer's home where Schirmer would offer advice on the composition of landscape paintings. Fifteen years later Gude began attending the meetings of the society with other students from his class, but as he progressed to greater levels of realism Gude began to make it clear that he did not agree with the ideas of composition Schirmer put forward during the meetings, saying specifically:I painted a large mountain view for which my studies of the Rondane Mountains provided the subject, and I had severe problems because Schirmer did not approve of the realistic rendering, and his suggestion that I should group the mountains more in accordance with the Classical ideal was impossible for me to accept.
In Düsseldorf Gude met Carl Friedrich Lessing who, while initially aloof, became Gude's friend and colleague. Their relationship was such a close one that Gude's eldest daughter eventually married one of Lessing's sons. The two artists differed in style though, with Lessing painting dramatic, historical works while Gude never once introduced historical events into his own paintings.Gude served as a student teacher at the academy until 1844, before leaving to live in Christiania. On July 25, 1850, Gude married Betsy Charlotte Juliane Anker (1830–1912), the daughter of General Erik Anker, in Christiania (today called Oslo).
Christiania landscape painting romantic trend figure painting Carl Friedrich Lessing classical trend Oslo romanticist Rondane Mountains