The Düsseldorf school of painting refers to a group of painters who taught or studied at the Düsseldorf Academy

Kunstakademie Düsseldorf

The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, formerly Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, is the Arts Academy of the city of Düsseldorf. It is well known for having produced many famous artists, such as Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Thomas Demand, and Andreas Gursky...

 (now the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf

Kunstakademie Düsseldorf

The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, formerly Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, is the Arts Academy of the city of Düsseldorf. It is well known for having produced many famous artists, such as Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Thomas Demand, and Andreas Gursky...

 or Düsseldorf State Art Academy) in the 1830s and 1840s, when the Academy was directed by the painter Wilhelm von Schadow. The work of the Düsseldorf School is characterized by finely detailed yet still fanciful landscapes, often with religious or allegorical stories set in the landscapes. Leading members of the Düsseldorf School advocated "plein air painting", and tended to use a palette

Palette (painting)

A palette , in the original sense of the word, is a rigid, flat surface on which a painter arranges and mixes paints. A palette is usually made of wood, plastic, ceramic, or other hard, inert, nonporous material, and can vary greatly in size and shape...

 with relatively subdued and even colors. The Düsseldorf School grew out of and was a part of the German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 Romantic movement. Prominent members of the Düsselorf School included von Schadow, Karl Friedrich Lessing

Karl Friedrich Lessing

Karl Friedrich Lessing was a German historical and landscape painter, grandnephew of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. He was born near Breslau, and was a pupil of Heinrich Anton Dähling at the Berlin Academy. He first devoted himself to landscape and in 1826 obtained a prize with his Cemetery in Ruins...

, Johann Wilhelm Schirmer

Johann Wilhelm Schirmer

Johann Wilhelm Schirmer was a German landscape artist from Jülich, within the Prussian Duchy of Jülich.-Biography:...

, Andreas Achenbach

Andreas Achenbach

Andreas Achenbach was a German landscape painter.Born at Kassel, he began his art education in 1827 in Düsseldorf under Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow at the Düsseldorf Academy of Painting. He studied at St Petersburg and travelled in Italy, Holland and Scandinavia...

, Hans Fredrik Gude, Oswald Achenbach

Oswald Achenbach

Oswald Achenbach was a German landscape painter.Born in Düsseldorf, he received his art education from his brother, Andreas Achenbach. His landscapes generally dwell on the rich and glowing effects of color which drew him to the Bay of Naples and the neighborhood of Rome. He also painted in the...

, and Adolf Schrödter

Adolf Schrödter

Adolf Schrödter was a German painter and illustrator. He acquired a reputation as a genre painter and member of the Düsseldorf school of painting, and illustrated such works as Till Eulenspiegel....

.

The Düsseldorf School had a significant influence on the Hudson River School

Hudson River school

The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism...

 in the United States, and many prominent Americans trained at the Düsseldorf Academy and show the influence of the Düsseldorf School, including George Caleb Bingham

George Caleb Bingham

George Caleb Bingham was an American artist whose paintings of American life in the frontier lands along the Missouri River exemplify the Luminist style. Left to languish in obscurity, Bingham's work was rediscovered in the 1930s...

, Eastman Johnson

Eastman Johnson

Eastman Johnson was an American painter, and Co-Founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, with his name inscribed at its entrance...

, Worthington Whittredge

Worthington Whittredge

Thomas Worthington Whittredge was an American artist of the Hudson River School. Whittredge was a highly regarded artist of his time, and was friends with several leading Hudson River School artists including Albert Bierstadt and Sanford Robinson Gifford...

, Richard Caton Woodville

Richard Caton Woodville

Richard Caton Woodville was an English artist and illustrator, who is best known for being one of the most prolific and effective painters of battle scenes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.-Biography:...

, William Stanley Haseltine

William Stanley Haseltine

William Stanley Haseltine was an American painter and draftsman who was associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting, the Hudson River School and Luminism.-Early life and education:...

, James McDougal Hart

James McDougal Hart

James McDougal Hart , was a Scottish-born American landscape and cattle painter of the Hudson River School. His older brother, William Hart, was also a Hudson River School artist, and the two painted similar subjects....

, and William Morris Hunt

William Morris Hunt

William Morris Hunt , American painter, was born at Brattleboro, Vermont to Jane Maria Hunt and Hon. Jonathan Hunt, who raised one of the preeminent families in American art...

, as well as German émigré Emanuel Leutze

Emanuel Leutze

Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze was a German American history painter best known for his painting Washington Crossing the Delaware.-Philadelphia:...

. Albert Bierstadt

Albert Bierstadt

Albert Bierstadt was a German-American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. In obtaining the subject matter for these works, Bierstadt joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion...

 applied but was not accepted. His American friend Worthington Whittredge

Worthington Whittredge

Thomas Worthington Whittredge was an American artist of the Hudson River School. Whittredge was a highly regarded artist of his time, and was friends with several leading Hudson River School artists including Albert Bierstadt and Sanford Robinson Gifford...

became his teacher while attending Düsseldorf.