Long before the concentration camp, Dachau was an internationally known artists' colony. The quality of light over the Dachau Moor — a melancholy, marshy plain north of Munich — attracted landscape painters from the 1850s onward, and by the late 19th century the town had become one of Germany's most celebrated plein-air painting destinations. Artists including Wilhelm Leibl, Carl Spitzweg, and Max Liebermann worked here; the colony was part of a broader European movement that included the Barbizon school in France and Newlyn in England.
The Gemäldegalerie Dachau, housed in a purpose-built museum in the old town, is dedicated to works from the colony era. The collection includes landscapes, portraits, and genre scenes that capture the flat moorland, the watery light, and the village life of late 19th-century rural Bavaria. The museum building itself, opened in 1995, was designed to complement the old town and is worth a look. Open Tuesday to Sunday; closed Monday. On Konrad-Adenauer-Strasse 3.