National Romanticism in art arose among Baltic-German artists with Estophile leanings; many of them studied and worked outside the region (mostly in Germany and Russia). The drawings and watercolours of the German-born Johann Christoph Brotze (1742–1823) in Riga, especially his 10-volume Sammlung verschiedener Liefländischer Monumente, Prospecte, Wappen etc., as well as documentary drawings by Alexander von Ungern-Sternberg (1806–1868), founded the basis for Romantic depictions of local landscape and peasantry. In the mid-century, rural landscapes with scenes of peasant life became more widespread (Gustav Adolf Hippius, 1792–1856; August Georg Wilhelm Pezold, 1794–1859; Carl Timoleon v. Neff, 1812–1874). Otto Friedrich Moeller (1812–1874), for instance, was of Baltic-German origin (and later also lived in Estonia), but he had studied abroad and worked for the Russian imperial court (including history paintings for the Kremlin).

There was a drawing school in Tartu, and some artists had received their education in the academies in Germany and St Petersburg, but professional careers usually took artists away from Estonia, while among local artists self-education prevailed. Oskar Hoffmann (1851–1912) and Oswald von Sass (1856–1913) were schooled in Düsseldorf, and Eduard von Gebhardt (1838–1925), Eugen Gustav Dücker (1841–1916), and Gregor von Bochmann (1850–1930) even became professors there. Local subject matter became the focus of this Realist “Düsseldorf School”.

Throughout the century, the vast majority of the pictorial corpus consisted of portraits and landscapes, also with some religious altar-paintings and engravings of peasant life. Grand historical events were rarely depicted. The most notable exception was Friedrich Ludwig von Maydell’s (1795–1846) series, Fünfzig Bilder aus der Geschichte der deutschen Ostsee-Provinzen Russlands nebst erklärendem Text (1839-42). Of the planned 50 illustrations, only 20 were finished, due to lack of buyers. The pictures represented the Baltic-German view of local history, describing the 13th-century crusades as the liberation of the local people from pagan darkness. Maydell was also the first to illustrate scenes of Estonian mythology – pen drawings which created a standard for depicting these topics for decades. Hoffmann produced interpretations of Estonian mythology and of the Kalevipoeg in the early 20th century.

Two history paintings by Pezold and Theodor Albert Sprengel (1832–1900) were ordered by the Great Guild of Tallinn in 1860s, thematizing scenes from the Reformation in Estonia. Both painters belonged to the Literatenstand, educated and liberal-progressive. Pezold was also the editor of the important Rigasche Zeitung, where he expressed his sharp opposition to the dominant conservative trend prevalent in the land-owning circles of the Baltic-German nobility.

The relationship between Baltic-German and Estonian culture remained ambivalent well into the interwar era. In rare cases artists of both ethnic backgrounds displayed their works side by side, e.g. the Ausstellung Baltischer Künstler in Riga in 1905. A separate national tradition for Estonian artists drawing inspiration from a wider cultural repertoire than peasant idyll emerged in the later decades of the 19th century, received its training in St Petersburg, and centred around the figure of Kristjan Raud.