Portal:Caspar David Friedrich
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Introduction
Caspar David Friedrich (5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic or megalithic ruins. His primary interest as an artist was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti-classical work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. Friedrich's paintings characteristically set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension".
Friedrich was born in the town of Greifswald on the Baltic Sea in what was at the time Swedish Pomerania. He studied in Copenhagen until 1798, before settling in Dresden. He came of age during a period when, across Europe, a growing disillusionment with materialistic society was giving rise to a new appreciation of spirituality. This shift in ideals was often expressed through a reevaluation of the natural world, as artists such as Friedrich, J. M. W. Turner and John Constable sought to depict nature as a "divine creation, to be set against the artifice of human civilization".
Selected general articles
The Monk by the Sea (German: Der Mönch am Meer) is an oil painting by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. It was painted between 1808 and 1810 in Dresden and was first shown together with the painting The Abbey in the Oakwood (Abtei im Eichwald) in the Berlin Academy exhibition of 1810. On Friedrich's request The Monk by the Sea was hung above The Abbey in the Oakwood. After the exhibition both pictures were bought by king Frederick Wilhelm III for his collection. Today the paintings hang side by side in the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
For its lack of concern with creating the illusion of depth, The Monk by the Sea was Friedrich's most radical composition. The broad expanses of sea and sky emphasize the meager figure of the monk, standing before the vastness of nature and the presence of God. Read more...
The Abbey in the Oakwood (German: Abtei im Eichwald) is an oil painting by Caspar David Friedrich. It was painted between 1809 and 1810 in Dresden and was first shown together with the painting The Monk by the Sea in the Prussian Academy of Arts exhibition of 1810. On Friedrich's request The Abbey in the Oakwood was hung beneath The Monk by the Sea. This painting is one of over two dozen of Friedrich's works that include cemeteries or graves.
After the exhibition both pictures were bought by king Frederick Wilhelm III for his collection. Today the paintings hang side by side in the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Read more...
Chalk Cliffs on Rügen (German: Kreidefelsen auf Rügen) is an oil painting of circa 1818 by German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. Read more...
Cross in the Mountains (Tetschen Altar) (1808). 115 × 110.5 cm. Oil on canvas. Galerie Neue Meister, Dresden. Frame by Kühn after Friedrich's design.
Cross in the Mountains, also known as the Tetschen Altar, is an oil painting by the German artist Caspar David Friedrich designed as an altarpiece. Among Friedrich's first major works, the 1808 painting marked an important break with the conventions of landscape painting by including Christian iconography. In the hierarchy of genres, religious (history) painting was considered the highest genre of art; Friedrich's use of landscape to evoke a spiritual message was thus controversial, causing debate between proponents of neoclassical ideals and the new German Romanticism of Friedrich and his peers. Read more...
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (German: Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer), also known as Wanderer above the Mist or Mountaineer in a Misty Landscape, is an oil painting c. 1818 by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. It has been considered one of the masterpieces of Romanticism and one of its most representative works. It currently resides in the Kunsthalle Hamburg in Hamburg, Germany. Read more...
Mountain Landscape with Rainbow (1809-10) (German: Gebirgslandschaft mit Regenbogen), is an oil painting by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. Like the Riesengebirge Landscape (1810) this painting was inspired by Friedrich's 1809 travels through Germany and along the shores of the Baltic Sea. The observation of nature in his travels allowed Friedrich to compose a landscape that is visionary rather than literal.
In the foreground a wayfarer has stopped to rest. He turns his gaze to the background, where a black abyss opens up. In those depths a few mountains can be glimpsed. Above the landscape, a rainbow forms in the waning light. Read more...
Cairn in Snow, also known as Dolmen in the snow, (German: Hünengrab im Schnee, literally "Giant's grave in the snow") is a landscape painting by the German painter Caspar David Friedrich. Friedrich is noted for his landscapes depicting features such as trees or Gothic ruins, silhouetted against the sky or in morning mists. The painting depicts leafless trees in the winter snow, with the tops of two of the trees broken off and the third bent by the prevailing wind, giving the work a haunted, spectral air. It is a Romantic allegorical landscape, depicting a stone cairn or dolmen set amid three oak trees on a hilltop, with a contemplative melancholy mood. It was probably painted around 1807, making it among Friedrich's first oil paintings. It measures 61 by 80 centimetres (24 in × 31 in) and has been held by the Galerie Neue Meister in Dresden since 1905.
The main elements of the painting are taken from different locations in eastern Germany. The cairn is thought to be based on the Neolithic burial site at Großsteingrab Gützkow [de], near the town Gützkow in West Pomerania; the megalith was destroyed before 1818, but Friedrich had sketched it since at least 1802. Friedrich sketched the trees at Neubrandenburg, most clearly an 1807 sepia sketch Hünengrab am Meer ("Dolmen by the sea"). Similar oak trees reappear in several works by Friedrich, including Monk in the Snow (1808, also known as Winter), The Abbey in the Oakwood (1818), Monastery graveyard under snow (1818) and Oak tree in snow (1829). The hill is located near Wustrow. The painting also includes four ravens, two above the cairn, one to the right, and a fourth high in the tree to the right. Read more...
Morning on the Riesengebirge (German - Morgen im Riesengebirge) is an 1810-1811 painting by Caspar David Friedrich of a scene on the Riesengebirge. It was exhibited at the Dresden Academy and then acquired in 1811 by Frederick William III of Prussia for Unter den Linden, his Berlin palace, where it remained until 1837, when it was moved to the Neue Palais in Potsdam.
From 1844 to 1865 it was exhibited in the Schloss Bellevue then later in the castle at Wiesbaden. After 1930 it was moved back to Berlin, where it was displayed in the Stadtschloss. In 1957 it was moved to Schloss Charlottenburg (with inventory number 6911 GK I) as the property of the Prussian State Museums (inventory number NG 10/85). It was moved to the former Romantic Art gallery in the Knobelsdorff wing of the Schloss in 1986 and since 2001 has hung in the room devoted to the artist in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Read more...
Caspar David Friedrich, Moonrise over the Sea (Mondaufgang am Meer), 1822. 55 × 71 cm (22 × 28 in). Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin
Moonrise by the Sea or Moonrise over the Sea (German: Mondaufgang am Meer) is an 1822 oil-on-canvas painting by German painter Caspar David Friedrich. The work depicts a romantic seascape.
Three young people, two women side by side and a man further back, are sitting on a large boulder by the sea, silhouetted against the sky as they watch the moon rising to the east above a band of clouds. In the distance are two sailing vessels, ghosting on a light breeze towards the spectators on the shore. The painting is probably a view of the Baltic Sea, near Friedrich's birthplace in Swedish Pomerania. It may be based on the beach at Stubbenkammer near Rügen. Read more...
Woman with a Raven at an Abyss (or Woman with a Raven on a Precipice; German: Die Frau mit dem Raben am Abgrund) is a c. 1803/04 print by the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, made into a woodcut by his brother Christian Friedrich, a carpenter and furniture maker, around the same time.
The images evokes themes of loss, abandonment, loneliness, the shortness of life, and death. To achieve this effect, Fredrick employs nightmarish imagery, including a gothic wood of barren trees whose branches appear as if the arms of the dead, a single vulturous raven, drawn in an almost childlike manner that recalls fairy tale illustrations. Read more...
The Stages of Life (German: Die Lebensstufen) is an allegorical oil painting of 1835 by the German Romantic landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich. Completed just five years before his death, this picture, like many of his works, forms a meditation both on his own mortality and on the transience of life.
The painting is set on a sea shore and shows in the foreground an aged man with his back turned to the viewer, walking towards two adults and two children on a hilltop overlooking a harbour. The figures are echoed by five ships shown in the harbour, each at a different distance from the shore, an allegorical reference to the different stages of human life, to the end of a journey, to the closeness of death. Read more...
Caspar David Friedrich, The lonely tree (Der einsame Baum), 1822, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin
The Lonely Tree (German: Der einsame Baum) is an 1822 oil-on-canvas painting by German painter Caspar David Friedrich. It measures 55 × 71 centimetres (22 × 28 in). The work depicts a panoramic view of a romantic landscape of plains with mountains in the background. A solitary oak tree dominates the foreground.
An ancient oak stands at the centre of the painting, clearly damaged but still standing. The tree's branches, dark in silhouette, project into the largely overcast morning sky. Banks of cloud seem to form a dome above the tree. The crown of the tree is dead, and the top of its trunk and two truncated branches resemble a cross. A shepherd shelters under the leaf-bearing lower branches. His flock of sheep graze beside a pond in the wide grassy meadow around the tree. In the middle distance, villages and a town nestle among other trees and bushes. Tree-clad hills pile up into blue-grey mountains in the background. Read more...
The Woman with the Spider's Web (or The Woman with the Spider's Web between Bare Trunks, German: Die Frau mit dem Spinnennetz zwischen kahlen Bäumen) is a small 1803 print by the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, made into a woodcut by his brother Christian Friedrich, a carpenter and furniture maker, the same year.
The image explores themes of death and the transience of life. It shows a woman sitting alone under an eerie, barren, dead tree in which the upper branches appear as if scattering crows. The lower ground is surrounded by encroaching and engulfing weeds, which reflecting her despair, seem as if about to envelope her. She rests one arm on a branch of the tree as she looks mournfully and enigmatically out towards the far distance, perhaps looking towards an uncertain future, or as has been suggested, in waiting for the return of a long lost lover. Read more...
The Sea of Ice (German: Das Eismeer), also called The Wreck of Hope (German: Die gescheiterte Hoffnung) is an oil painting of 1823–1824 by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. Read more...
Two Men Contemplating the Moon, Galerie Neue Meister, 1819–20. 35 x 44.5 cm
Two Men Contemplating the Moon (German: Zwei Männer in Betrachtung des Mondes) and Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon are a series of similar paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, the setting being among his best-known works. Friedrich painted at least three versions, with one variation featuring a man and a woman. The 1819–20 version in the Galerie Neue Meister is thought to be the original; the c. 1824 variant with a woman is in the Alte Nationalgalerie; and the c. 1830 version is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
These German Romantic landscape paintings feature two figures in a dark forest silhouetted by a pastel sky. The works' dark foregrounds and lighter backgrounds create a sharp contrast. The sky suggests that the time is around dusk, with the waxing crescent moon close to setting. A dead, uprooted tree's dark roots and branches contrast with the sky. The jagged branches and stark contrasts seem to create a threatening environment for the figures, and are reminiscent of the imposing Gothic style seen originally in the medieval era, but revived in the Romantic era. The same can be said of the dark, shadowy trees and rocks surrounding the couple. The figures themselves are dressed in dark colors and stiff, somewhat formal garments, which also serve to signify their higher class. The works emphasize spirituality in nature and the presence of the sublime, which are major themes of Friedrich. Read more...
The Tree of Crows (also known as Raven Tree) is an oil painting of 1822 by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. Acquired by the Musée du Louvre in 1975, it has been called one of Friedrich's "most compelling paintings."
The painting depicts a twisted oak tree, bare but for a few dead leaves, seen against an evening sky. An inscription on the back of the canvas refers to the hill at the painting's center as a Hünengrab, or dolmen, a prehistoric burial ground. In the distance can be seen the ocean, and Cape Arkona's chalk cliffs, a favorite subject of Friedrich's. Two crows are perched on the oak, while a flock descends toward it. In the darkened foreground are a hacked trunk and the upright stump of another oak. Read more...
Did you know...
- ... that the German painter Caspar David Friedrich's Cross in the Mountains constituted "a revolution in landscape painting"?
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Selected images
Portrait of Caspar David Friedrich, Gerhard von Kügelgen c. 1810–20
Ivan Shishkin, In the Wild North (1891). 161 x 118 cm. Kiev Museum of Russian Art
Moonrise over the Sea (1822). 55 × 71 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. During the early 1820s, human figures appear with increasing frequency in his paintings. Of this period, Linda Siegel writes, "the importance of human life, particularly his family, now occupies his thoughts more and more, and his friends appear as frequent subjects in his art."
Old Heroes' Graves, (1812), 49.5 × 70.5 cm. Kunsthalle, Hamburg. A dilapidated monument inscribed "Arminius" invokes the Germanic chieftain, a symbol of nationalism, while the four tombs of fallen heroes are slightly ajar, freeing their spirits for eternity. Two French soldiers appear as small figures before a cave, lower and deep in a grotto surrounded by rock, as if farther from heaven.
Two Men Contemplating the Moon (c. 1825–30), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Self-portrait (1800) is a chalk drawing of the artist at 26, completed while he was studying at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen. Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen
The Sea of Ice (1823–24), Kunsthalle Hamburg. This scene has been described as "a stunning composition of near and distant forms in an Arctic image".
Paul Nash, Totes Meer (Sea of the Dead), 1940–41. 101.6 x 152.4 cm. Tate Gallery. Nash's work depicts a graveyard of crashed German planes comparable to The Sea of Ice (above). Nash described the image as a sea, even suggesting that the jagged forms were not metal but ice.
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818). 94.8 × 74.8 cm, Kunsthalle Hamburg. This well-known and especially Romantic masterpiece was described by the historian John Lewis Gaddis as leaving a contradictory impression, "suggesting at once mastery over a landscape and the insignificance of the individual within it. We see no face, so it's impossible to know whether the prospect facing the young man is exhilarating, or terrifying, or both."
Georg Friedrich Kersting, Caspar David Friedrich in his Studio (1819), Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Kersting portrays an aged Friedrich holding a maulstick at his canvas.
Seashore by Moonlight (1835–36). 134 × 169 cm. Kunsthalle, Hamburg. His final "black painting", Seashore by Moonlight, is described by William Vaughan as the "darkest of all his shorelines."
Friedrich: Cemetery Entrance Galerie Neue Meister, Dresden
The Oak Tree in the Snow (1829). 71 × 48 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Friedrich was one of the first artists to portray winter landscapes as stark and dead. His winter scenes are solemn and still—according to the art historian Hermann Beenken, Friedrich painted winter scenes in which "no man has yet set his foot".
The Stages of Life (Die Lebensstufen (1835). Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig. The Stages of Life is a meditation on the artist's own mortality, depicting five ships at various distances from the shore. The foreground similarly shows five figures at different stages of life.
Cross in the Mountains (Tetschen Altar) (1808). 115 × 110.5 cm. Galerie Neue Meister, Dresden. Friedrich's first major work, the piece breaks with the traditional representation of crucifixion in altarpieces by depicting the scene as a landscape.
The Abbey in the Oakwood (1808–10). 110.4 × 171 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Albert Boime writes, "Like a scene from a horror movie, it brings to bear on the subject all the Gothic clichés of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries".
The Cross Beside The Baltic (1815), 45 × 33.5 cm. Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin. This painting marked a move away by Friedrich from depictions in broad daylight, and a return to nocturnal scenes, twilight and a deeper poignancy of mood.
Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon (c. 1824). 34 × 44 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. A couple gaze longingly at nature. Dressed in "Old German" clothes, according to Robert Hughes they are "scarcely different in tone or modelling from the deep dramas of nature around them".
Graveyard under Snow (1826). 31 × 25 cm. Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig. Friedrich sketched memorial monuments and sculptures for mausoleums, reflecting his obsession with death and the afterlife. He also created some of the funerary art in Dresden's cemeteries.
The Giant Mountains (1830–35). 72 × 102 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Friedrich sought not just to explore the blissful enjoyment of a beautiful view, as in the classic conception, but rather to examine an instant of sublimity, a reunion with the spiritual self through the contemplation of nature.
Chalk Cliffs on Rügen (1818). 90.5 × 71 cm. Museum Oskar Reinhart am Stadtgarten, Winterthur, Switzerland. Friedrich married Christiane Caroline Bommer in 1818, and on their honeymoon they visited relatives in Neubrandenburg and Greifswald. This painting celebrates the couple's union.
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