Menzel personifies the typical problem of German art so perfectly, that the story of his life might almost stand for a history, not of German art but of the German artist.
—Julius Meier-Graefe
The “problem” which Julius Meier-Graefe alludes to in discussing the art of the German painter Adolph Menzel (1815–1905) may be succinctly stated as follows: owing to a sensibility that tends to be graphic rather than painterly and to an attitude toward culture that tends to favor official opinion at the expense of new ideas, German artists in the nineteenth century failed for the most part to appreciate the emerging tradition of modern painting in the work of Constable, Delacroix, Corot, Courbet, and Manet. They thus also failed to understand the vital relation that obtained between modern painting and the Old Masters. Writing about this double failure in the first decade of the twentieth century, Meier-Graefe rendered a sweeping judgment: “During this fruitful development of modern painting German art has remained at a standstill. And to stand still here means even more than elsewhere: to go backward.” It is a judgment for which certain partisans of German art, both in Germany and elsewhere, have never forgiven Meier-Graefe, and it is for this reason that on the occasion of the first Adolph Menzel retrospective in the United States, Meier-Graefe is cast in the villain’s role by one writer after another in the voluminous catalogue that accompanies the exhibition.[1]
It was not the case, however,
