His brother, Andreas Achenbach, who was twelve years older, was also among the most important German landscape painters of the 19th century.

Hermann Achenbach was employed in a series of jobs, including beer and vinegar brewer, guesthouse owner, and bookkeeper.

Possibly, the bylaws were in practice mere guidelines and exceptions were made often, or perhaps only for highly gifted students like Achenbach.

In 1843, the sixteen-year-old Achenbach began a journey of several months through Upper Bavaria and North Tyrol during which he continued his nature studies.

However, those that do indicate that his early choices of subject matter and technique were heavily influenced by the ideas being taught at the art academies of the time.

In the oil studies that Achenbach completed during these trips, he adhered very closely to the landscape and concerned himself with the details of the typical Italian vegetation.

Schulte's gallery showed the works of artists who were independent of the Academy and played an important role in Achenbach's early economic success.

Together with Albert Flamm, he traveled from Rome into the surrounding countryside and visited the areas where earlier landscape painters had been inspired.

On the trip he got to know a number of other painters better, including Arnold Böcklin, Ludwig Thiersch, and Heinrich Dreber with whom he spent a long time in Olevano.

Thiersch once commented how differently the artists processed their impressions of the landscapes: Dreber drew elaborate pencil sketches, Böcklin simply let himself experience the environment and recorded relatively little in his sketchbook, while Achenbach and Flamm both painted oil studies outdoors.

Achenbach's surviving studies show that he was not overly interested in details but concentrated on the characteristic colors and forms and the distribution of light and shadow.

He focused on his color impressions, setting layers of paint in different thicknesses over one another to find the desired tone.

The appointment of Achenbach to a position was a conscious political decision reflecting the new direction of the Düsseldorf Academy, to bring about a conciliation with the independent artists.

In the same year, Achenbach was named a Knight of the Legion of Honor by Napoleon III and from 1863 to 1868 his painters were shown at the Salon in Paris.

In 1871 he and his family spent almost nine months in Italy, including Castellammare di Stabia, Amalfi, Capri, and Ischia, and several weeks in Sorrento.

This high social position had also involved a very large and ostentatious house where he hosted artists, writers, scholars, military officers and members of the nobility.

As in his oil studies in the 1850s, in his later works Achenbach built colors up additively, using the brush, palette knife, and his fingers.

Another feature of Achenbach's late work is that the level of detail does not decrease continuously with the perspective, but rather reflects his aims for the overall effect of the painting.

Furthermore, while in his earlier paintings, the colors were subdued and dominated by the overall tone, in later works, accentuated contrasts play an important role.

Sketches, drawings, and oil studies were for Achenbach, as with other painters, primarily as memory aids for later work in the studio.

However, the tastes of the market and the purchase decisions of influential critics still demanded the "perfected" or "completed" paintings, and thus so did the Galleries.

At the time, the paintings of John Constable and Charles-François Daubigny, now highly regarded, were criticized on account of their sketchiness.

The influence of Schirmer on his early works is likely due to his brother, twelve years older, Andreas Achenbach, who likewise studied at the Düsseldorf Academy.

He probably knew Turner's paintings primarily from the steel engraving prints published in the art books of the time.

Two paintings by Turner, Mercury and Argus and Dogana, and Madonna della Salute, Venice were already reproduced in prints by 1843.

Similar to Courbet, one finds in Achenbach's works often bring together lone elements that differ significantly in distance from the perspective of the painter.

By contrast, Achenbach was radical in his brushwork and application of paint but maintained the formal criteria of traditional composition.

Other art historians cast Achenbach in a mediating role because he presented traditional values in his own style and moved in the direction of modernity.

However, as early as the start of the 20th century, he was seen as a painter who in his later works catered to public tastes and turned into a typical representative of the Gründerzeit period.

His works are in the collections of many museums, mainly in Germany but also across Europe and America including the Musée d'Orsay and the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg.