Melchior Paul von Deschwanden

After a meeting with the Nazarene artist Friedrich Overbeck, he made a conscious decision to devote his life's work to religious painting.

After returning to Switzerland finally, he received his first order from an ecclesiastical source, altarpieces for the chapel of St. Peter in Lucerne.

Though himself a portraitist of talent, he devoted more of his time to religious paintings, creating a style of simple understandable compositions, expressive figures and a smooth technique.

Deschwanden is known to have taken many pupils, amongst whom were the fellow artist from Stans Adalbert Baggenstos, and the Swiss-born American painter Adolfo Müller-Ury in whose arms he is documented as dying in February 1881.

In the front garden of the former Nidwaldner Kantonalbank in the centre of Stans is a monument by the Swiss sculptor Auguste Stanser Blaesi (1903–1979) that was erected in memory of Deschwanden in the autumn of 1933.