Oil Painting, 'Landscape with Farm House', Heinrich Deiters, German school, 1860

A mountainous and wooded landscape with a thatched farmhouse is visible at left, half-hidden by trees, and a small figure walks along the path leading from it into the foreground.

Bequeathed by John M. Parsons

Bequeathed by John M. Parsons, 1870

Historical significance: This painting is a fine example of Deiters' landscapes, a category in which he specialised under the influence of the painter Andreas Achenbach (1815-1910), whom he may have met in Düsseldorf.
This work depicts in a naturalistic way a hunter and his dog walking on a path in a wood, with a house behind them. In the first half of the century Düsseldorf saw the development of a school of landscape painters encouraged by Wilhelm Schadow (1788-1862). In the second half of the century, the influence of French Realism with Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) and the Barbizon school became dominant. Although this painting was clarely influenced by a direct approach of nature, it also draws upon the 17th-century Dutch landscape paintings, especially the painter Jacob van Ruisdael (c.1628-1682) from whom he borrowed the elongated shape of the broad-leaves trees.
Deiters' oeuvre is well represented in the museums of Cologne, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Dresden and Mayence but is little known in the U.K where his paintings are mostly housed in private collections.

Heinrich Deiters (1840-1916) was born at Munster, Westphalia and studied at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. He later travelled in Europe, especially Belgium, Holland and France where he studied from nature. He was essentially a landscape painter and died in Munich in 1916.

This painting is a fine example of Deiters' landscape paintings in which he combined the 17th-century Dutch imagery and the new interest for a direct approach of nature developed by the French Realism and the school of Barbizon. Western art in general and the German school in particular developed a new interest for naturalistic landscape paintings in the 19th century and Düsseldorf was one of the main artistic centres for this category in Germany.

527-1870