Thoma's Symbolist paintings were produced under the strong influence of the so-called Roman Germans - Hans von Marées, Arnold Böcklin, and Anselm Feuerbach - who in the 1880s preferred Italian inspiration to conservative German tradition. Yet Thoma's oeuvre embodies that tradition: without going beyond the bounds of accepted taste, he introduced features of national romanticism into the classical genres of landscape, portrait, and still-life.
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