The Art Academies of Karlsruhe, Munich and Berlin

The Düsseldorf school of painting experienced a continued decline in its reputation throughout the 1860s. In 1864, Norwegian landscape painter Hans Gude switched to the Karlsruhe Academy, which he subsequently left for Berlin in 1880. Many Scandinavian students followed him, although they looked increasingly to the new plein-air style of painting from France for inspiration.

For those Scandinavian painters interested in portraiture and figure painting, the classes given by Karl Gussow were an important incentive for moving to Karlsruhe and on to Berlin. Gussow even maintained a large class of female artists, who in those days were denied access to the academies, among them many Scandinavians.

As Germany’s centre of history painting, Munich, too, was home to a large community of Scandinavian artists in the 1870s.