Behold him now at perhaps the zenith of his career; having attained the object of his desires, an artistic education; having in a few short years established a fame that many academical pupils of many years’ standing had failed to win; surrounded by many friends, living in the home-circle of his first patron and dearest friend in that pleasant city on the Rhine. His future lay fair and unclouded before him, leading him on from triumph to still greater triumph. But inscrutable are the ways of Providence; God’s ways are not man’s ways; and the tree that promised such glorious fruit was never to reach maturity.
To the house of Geselschap (the name of the artist who had befriended Mintrop, and in whose house he lived) came one fine summer a young lady-friend. In the free unrestrained home society, Mintrop had much opportunity of becoming intimately acquainted with this young girl. He had been learning much of life as well as art since he came to Düsseldorf; but women in a higher rank than the peasants he had for thirty years been familiar with, were ever an object of peculiar interest and intense admiration to him; and the grace and amiability of this stranger soon made a powerful impression on him. For a whole long happy summer this fair young creature lived under the same roof with him, and treated the grave shy man with the playfulness and friendliness of a sister, wholly unaware of the passion she had unwittingly kindled. In short he, the hard-working country Raphael, engrossed in his art, which he pursued for itself, not for money (about which he was one of the most careless of mortals)—he, the rough Westphalian peasant, with hard hands and uncouth figure, had learned to love this gentle maiden, with all the strength of his noble patient heart.
That long happy summer passed, and the young lady returned to her friends. Shortly after, the announcement of her engagement to be married reached Düsseldorf, piercing the true heart that loved her so well. To commemorate her marriage, Mintrop composed a wonderful series of pictures, that will always link her name to his.
The ‘Love of King Heinzelmann’ they were called; seventy scenes in all, in which he, in the guise of King Heinzelmann, following his beloved Johanna through every incident in daily life, protects and helps her as he would fain have done in reality. True to the traditions of his youth, numbers of quaint dwarfs with long beards, pointed caps, and trunk-hose, attend on the commands of their king; who is himself a strange weird vision with a wizened face, pointed cap, and magic wand, tipped by a burning eye. In a burgher household, these droll figures sweep and wash, bake and brew, throwing themselves into many strange contortions, in the service of Anna; the king ever with them, looking sadder and sadder; for as time goes on, a stranger from America falls in love with Johanna and carries her away across the sea. The poor gnome-king loves in vain; and when the day comes that Johanna and her lover sail away, he and his dwarfs stand sadly on the shore (for they may not cross the sea) watching the vessel till it fades from sight.