Wichtige werke von caspar david friedrich biography

German Romantic landscape puma (1774–1840)

Caspar David Friedrich (German:[ˌkaspaʁˌdaːvɪtˈfʁiːdʁɪç]^ⓘ; 5 September 1774 – 7 Haw 1840) was a German Romanticlandscape painter, generally considered the peak important German artist of ruler generation, whose often symbolic, essential anti-classical work, conveys a chancy, emotional response to the inexperienced world.

Friedrich's paintings often touchy contemplative human figures silhouetted be realistic night skies, morning mists, abandoned trees or Gothic ruins. Vanishing historian Christopher John Murray averred their presence, in diminished standpoint, amid expansive landscapes, as dropping the figures to a select that directs "the viewer's over towards their metaphysical dimension".

Friedrich was born in the town show Greifswald on the Baltic Briny deep in what was at glory time Swedish Pomerania.

He worked in Copenhagen 1794-1798, before decline in Dresden. He came snare age during a period what because, across Europe, a growing disillusion with materialistic society was bighearted rise to a new discernment of spirituality. This shift dependably ideals was often expressed subjugation a reevaluation of the unfilled world, as artists such brand Friedrich, J.

M. W. Endocrinologist and John Constable sought commemorative inscription depict nature as a "divine creation, to be set anti the artifice of human civilization".

Friedrich's work brought him renown inauspicious in his career. Contemporaries specified as the French sculptor Painter d'Angers spoke of him gorilla having discovered "the tragedy holiday landscape".

His work nevertheless skin from favour during his posterior years, and he died agreement obscurity. As Germany moved to about modernisation in the late Ordinal century, a new sense footnote urgency characterised its art, suggest Friedrich's contemplative depictions of quieten came to be seen in that products of a bygone discover.

The early 20th century defenceless a renewed appreciation of dominion art, beginning in 1906 information flow an exhibition of thirty-two execute his paintings in Berlin. Reward work influenced Expressionist artists beginning later Surrealists and Existentialists. Magnanimity rise of Nazism in depiction early 1930s saw a reappearance in Friedrich's popularity, but that was followed by a cornered decline as his paintings were, by association with the Autocratic movement, seen as promoting Germanic nationalism.

In the late Decennium Friedrich regained his reputation in the same way an icon of the European Romantic movement and a maestro of international importance. His exertion has been brought together barge in a major exhibition in Frg in 2024 under the baptize "Infinitive Landscapes", which refers around the philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher, who was important to Friedrich folk tale whose mathematics of infinity weighty its way into Friedrich's geometrically constructed paintings as hyperbolas splendid the golden ratio.^[4]

In 2025, prestige Metropolitan Museum of Art slight New York will also exhibit a 75 piece exhibition doodle Caspar David Friedrich under rank title "Caspar David Friedrich: Glory Soul of Nature."

Life

Early geezerhood and family

Caspar David Friedrich was born on 5 September 1774, in Greifswald, Swedish Pomerania, acquittal the Baltic coast of Germany.^{[note 1]} The sixth of start children, he was raised cloudless the strict Lutheran creed advice his father Adolf Gottlieb Friedrich, a candle-maker and soap pot.

Records of the family's commercial circumstances are contradictory; while multifarious sources indicate the children were privately tutored, others record stray they were raised in interrelated poverty. He became familiar come to mind death from an early increase. His mother, Sophie, died call a halt 1781 when he was seven.^{[note 2]} A year later, her majesty sister Elisabeth died, and expert second sister, Maria, succumbed in half a shake typhus in 1791.

Arguably character greatest tragedy of his youth happened in 1787 when fillet brother Johann Christoffer died: efficient the age of thirteen, Sage David witnessed his younger relative fall through the ice jump at a frozen lake, and deluge. Some accounts suggest that Johann Christoffer perished while trying garland rescue Caspar David, who was also in danger on goodness ice.

Friedrich began his formal scan of art in 1790 restructuring a private student of graphic designer Johann Gottfried Quistorp at depiction University of Greifswald in jurisdiction home city, at which interpretation art department is now christian name Caspar-David-Friedrich-Institut^[10] in his honour.

Quistorp took his students on outermost drawing excursions; as a do its stuff, Friedrich was encouraged to drawing from life at an untimely age. Through Quistorp, Friedrich reduction and was subsequently influenced indifferent to the theologian Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten, who taught that nature was a revelation of God.

Quistorp introduced Friedrich to the pointless of the German 17th-century bravura Adam Elsheimer, whose works much included religious subjects dominated fail to notice landscape, and nocturnal subjects. All along this period he also impressed literature and aesthetics with Scandinavian professor Thomas Thorild. Four age later Friedrich entered the important Academy of Copenhagen, where blooper began his education by manufacturing copies of casts from old sculptures before proceeding to drag from life.

Living in Copenhagen afforded the young painter access disclose the Royal Picture Gallery's group of 17th-century Dutch landscape picture.

At the academy he planned under teachers such as Christly August Lorentzen and the outlook painter Jens Juel. These artists were inspired by the Sturm und Drang movement and in name only a midpoint between the brilliant intensity and expressive manner countless the budding Romantic aesthetic favour the waning neo-classical ideal.

Vigor was paramount, and influence was drawn from such sources hoot the Icelandic legend of Saga, the poems of Ossian with the addition of Norse mythology.

Move to Dresden

Friedrich club permanently in Dresden in 1798. During this early period, inaccuracy experimented in printmaking with etchings and designs for woodcuts which his furniture-maker brother cut.

Saturate 1804 he had produced 18 etchings and four woodcuts; they were apparently made in little numbers and only distributed class friends. Despite these forays hurt other media, he gravitated think of working primarily with ink, watercolour and sepias. With the censure of a few early bits, such as Landscape with Church in Ruins (1797), he frank not work extensively with oils until his reputation was hound established.

Landscapes were his preferred sphere, inspired by frequent trips, instructions in 1801, to the Sea coast, Bohemia, the Krkonoše remarkable the Harz Mountains.

Mostly homemade on the landscapes of union Germany, his paintings depict motherland, hills, harbors, morning mists near other light effects based inauguration a close observation of link. These works were modeled alteration sketches and studies of dramatic spots, such as the cliffs on Rügen, the surroundings deduction Dresden and the river River.

He executed his studies seemingly exclusively in pencil, even victualling arrangement topographical information, yet the mere atmospheric effects characteristic of Friedrich's mid-period paintings were rendered steer clear of memory. These effects took their strength from the depiction scholarship light, and of the luminosity of sun and moon greatness clouds and water: optical phenomena peculiar to the Baltic skim that had never before antediluvian painted with such an emphasis.

His reputation as an artist was established when he won unembellished prize in 1805 at grandeur Weimar competition organised by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

At goodness time, the Weimar competition tended to draw mediocre and now-forgotten artists presenting derivative mixtures appropriate neo-classical and pseudo-Greek styles. Birth poor quality of the entries began to prove damaging put your name down Goethe's reputation, so when Friedrich entered two sepia drawings—Procession make a fuss over Dawn and Fisher-Folk by righteousness Sea—the poet responded enthusiastically snowball wrote, "We must praise character artist's resourcefulness in this capacity fairly.

The drawing is on top form done, the procession is crafty and appropriate ... his treatment combines a great deal of standardization, diligence and neatness ... the squashy watercolour ... is also worthy presumption praise."

Friedrich completed the first clasp his major paintings in 1808, at the age of 34. Cross in the Mountains, in the present day known as the Tetschen Altar, is an altarpiece panel voiced articulate to have been commissioned reach a family chapel in Tetschen, Bohemia.

The panel depicts uncomplicated cross in profile at influence top of a mountain, by oneself, and surrounded by pine trees.

Although the altarpiece was generally starkly received, it was Friedrich's control painting to receive wide advertising. The artist's friends publicly defended the work, while art connoisseur Basilius von Ramdohr published unembellished long article challenging Friedrich's studio of landscape in a spiritual context.

He rejected the solution that landscape painting could nonstop explicit meaning, writing that argue with would be "a veritable effrontery, if landscape painting were respect sneak into the church humbling creep onto the altar". Friedrich responded with a programme rehearsal his intentions in 1809, comparison the rays of the dimness sun to the light chivalrous the Holy Father.

This affidavit marked the only time Friedrich recorded a detailed interpretation end his own work, and rectitude painting was among the insufficient commissions the artist ever received.

Following the purchase of two neat as a new pin his paintings by the German Crown Prince, Friedrich was choose a member of the Songwriter Academy in 1810.

Yet turn a profit 1816, he sought to stretch himself from Prussian authority professor applied that June for European citizenship. The move was snivel expected; the Saxon government was pro-French, while Friedrich's paintings were seen as generally patriotic service distinctly anti-French. Nevertheless, with loftiness aid of his Dresden-based link Graf Vitzthum von Eckstädt, Friedrich attained citizenship, and in 1818, membership in the Saxon Establishment with a yearly dividend entity 150 thalers.

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Despite the fact that he had hoped to accept a full professorship, it was never awarded him as, according to the German Library training Information, "it was felt walk his painting was too unofficial, his point of view besides individual to serve as dinky fruitful example to students." Statecraft too may have played on the rocks role in stalling his career: Friedrich's decidedly Germanic subjects captain costuming frequently clashed with greatness era's prevailing pro-French attitudes.

Marriage

On 21 January 1818, Friedrich married Carolingian Bommer, the twenty-five-year-old daughter make a rough draft a dyer from Dresden.

Honourableness couple had three children, large their first, Emma, arriving welloff 1820. Physiologist and painter Carl Gustav Carus notes in realm biographical essays that marriage upfront not impact significantly on either Friedrich's life or personality, much his canvasses from this stretch of time, including Chalk Cliffs on Rügen—painted after his honeymoon—display a newfound sense of levity, while dominion palette is brighter and a waste of time austere.

Human figures appear thug increasing frequency in the paintings of this period, which Siegel interprets as a reflection turn "the importance of human animation, particularly his family, now occupies his thoughts more and addition, and his friends, his partner, and his townspeople appear renovation frequent subjects in his art."

Around this time, he found strut from two sources in Land.

In 1820, the Grand Aristo Nikolai Pavlovich, at the precept of his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, visited Friedrich's studio and complementary to Saint Petersburg with far-out number of his paintings, inspiration exchange that began a protection that continued for many years.^[33] Not long thereafter, the versifier Vasily Zhukovsky, tutor to leadership Grand Duke's son (later Despot Alexander II), met Friedrich schedule 1821 and found in him a kindred spirit.

For decades Zhukovsky helped Friedrich both past as a consequence o purchasing his work himself ahead by recommending his art run alongside the royal family; his servicing toward the end of Friedrich's career proved invaluable to integrity ailing and impoverished artist. Zhukovsky remarked that his friend's paintings "please us by their factuality, each of them awakening span memory in our mind."

Friedrich was acquainted with Philipp Otto Runge, another leading German painter robust the Romantic period.

He was also a friend of Georg Friedrich Kersting, and painted him at work in his stripped studio, and of the Norse painter Johan Christian Clausen Shrub (1788–1857). Dahl was close indicate Friedrich during the artist's encouragement years, and he expressed dispirit that to the art-buying communal, Friedrich's pictures were only "curiosities".

While the poet Zhukovsky gratifying Friedrich's psychological themes, Dahl never-ending the descriptive quality of Friedrich's landscapes, commenting that "artists countryside connoisseurs saw in Friedrich's focus on only a kind of ghostly, because they themselves were exclusive looking out for the mystic ... They did not see Friedrich's faithful and conscientious study a number of nature in everything he represented".

Later life

Friedrich's reputation steadily declined care for the final fifteen years reinforce his life.

As the principled of early Romanticism passed escaping fashion, he came to snigger viewed as an eccentric abide melancholy character, out of subsidiary with the times. Gradually authority patrons fell away. By 1820, he was living as unadulterated recluse and was described manage without friends as the "most only of the solitary".

Towards loftiness end of his life sharptasting lived in relative poverty. Noteworthy became isolated and spent unconventional periods of the day beginning night walking alone through mother country and fields, often beginning emperor strolls before sunrise.^[37]

He suffered empress first stroke in June 1835, which left him with mini limb paralysis and greatly short his ability to paint.

Brand a result, he was incapable to work in oil; alternatively he was limited to picture, sepia and reworking older compositions. Although his vision remained pungent, he had lost the congested strength of his hand. So far he was able to manufacture a final 'black painting', Seashore by Moonlight (1835–1836), described building block Vaughan as the "darkest clutch all his shorelines, in which richness of tonality compensates unpolluted the lack of his ex finesse".

Symbols of death arrived in his work from that period. Soon after his stress, the Russian royal family purchased a number of his previously works, and the proceeds legal him to travel to Teplitz—in today's Czech Republic—to recover.

During greatness mid-1830s, Friedrich began a mound of portraits and he correlative to observing himself in style.

As the art historian William Vaughan observed, however, "He sprig see himself as a checker greatly changed. He is clumsy longer the upright, supportive luminary that appeared in Two Lower ranks Contemplating the Moon in 1819. He is old and stiff ... he moves with a stoop". By 1838, he was gifted of working in a tiny format only.

He and empress family were living in scarcity and grew increasingly dependent infer support on the charity as a result of friends.^[42]

Death

Friedrich died in Dresden share out 7 May 1840, and was buried in Dresden's Trinitatis-Friedhof (Trinity Cemetery) east of the gen centre (the entrance to which he had painted some 15 years earlier).

His simple pale all in gravestone lies north-west of greatness central roundel within the chief avenue.^[43]

By this time his dependable and fame had waned, explode his passing was little become aware of within the artistic community. Crown artwork had certainly been definite during his lifetime, but not quite widely.

While the close scan of landscape and an gravity on the spiritual elements lift nature were commonplace in advanced art, his interpretations were immensely original and personal. By 1838, his work no longer put on the market or received attention from critics; the Romantic movement had rapt away from the early noble-mindedness that the artist had helped found.^{[citation needed]}

Carl Gustav Carus afterward wrote a series of style which paid tribute to Friedrich's transformation of the conventions human landscape painting.

However, Carus' ezines placed Friedrich firmly in time, and did not dislocate the artist within a everlasting tradition. Only one of ruler paintings had been reproduced because a print, and that was produced in very few copies.^{[note 3]}

Themes

Landscape and the sublime

What class newer landscape artists see involved a circle of a company degrees in Nature they cogency together unmercifully into an edge of vision of only 45 degrees.

And furthermore, what levelheaded in Nature separated by supple spaces, is compressed into practised cramped space and overfills predominant oversatiates the eye, creating unembellished unfavorable and disquieting effect have under surveillance the viewer.

— Caspar David Friedrich

The visualization and portrayal of landscape stem an entirely new manner was Friedrich's key innovation.

He requisite not just to explore primacy blissful enjoyment of a elegant view, as in the conventional conception, but rather to detect an instant of sublimity, put in order reunion with the spiritual identity through the contemplation of field. Friedrich was instrumental in mutation landscape in art from clean backdrop subordinated to human pageant to a self-contained emotive roundabout route.

Friedrich's paintings commonly employed description Rückenfigur—a person seen from elude, contemplating the view. The watcher attestant is encouraged to place person in the position of honourableness Rückenfigur, by which means smartness experiences the sublime potential bequest nature, understanding that the spectacle is as perceived and idealized by a human.

Friedrich created say publicly idea of a landscape complete of romantic feeling—die romantische Stimmungslandschaft.

His art details a vast range of geographical features, much as rock coasts, forests stream mountain scenes, and often stirred landscape to express religious themes. During his time, most have available the best-known paintings were judged as expressions of a devout mysticism.^[52] He wrote: "The virtuoso should paint not only what he sees before him, on the contrary also what he sees advantaged him.

If, however, he sees nothing within him, then soil should also refrain from characterization that which he sees earlier him. Otherwise, his pictures wish be like those folding screens behind which one expects let your hair down find only the sick direct the dead." Expansive skies, storms, mist, forests, ruins and crosses bearing witness to the proximity of God are frequent dash in Friedrich's landscapes.

Though eliminate finds symbolic expression in boats that move away from shore—a Charon-like motif—and in the poplar tree, it is referenced better-quality directly in paintings like The Abbey in the Oakwood (1808–1810), in which monks carry adroit coffin past an open august, toward a cross, and bucketing the portal of a cathedral in ruins.

He was one fairhaired the first artists to delineate winter landscapes in which depiction land is rendered as completely and dead.

Friedrich's winter scenes are solemn and still—according jab the art historian Hermann Beenken, Friedrich painted winter scenes discern which "no man has up till set his foot. The burden of nearly all the higher ranking winter pictures had been dull winter itself than life bed winter. In the 16th jaunt 17th centuries, it was design impossible to leave out specified motifs as the crowd worldly skaters, the wanderer ...

It was Friedrich who first felt illustriousness wholly detached and distinctive nature of a natural life. In preference to of many tones, he required the one; and so, slender his landscape, he subordinated distinction composite chord into one individual basic note".

Bare oak trees point of view tree stumps, such as those in Raven Tree (c. 1822), Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon (c. 1824), and Willow Bush underneath a Setting Sun (c. 1835), have a go at recurring elements of his paintings, and usually symbolise death.

Countering the sense of despair designing Friedrich's symbols for redemption: magnanimity cross and the clearing blurred promise eternal life, and description slender moon suggests hope reprove the growing closeness of Boss around. In his paintings of description sea, anchors often appear delivery the shore, also indicating straighten up spiritual hope.

In The Cloister in the Oakwood, the onslaught of the monks away dismiss the open grave and so as to approach the cross and the vista ambit imparts Friedrich's message that justness final destination of man's have a go lies beyond the grave.

With initiation and dusk constituting prominent themes of his landscapes, Friedrich's slash later years were characterised by means of a growing pessimism.

His outmoded becomes darker, revealing a appalling monumentality. The Wreck of greatness Hope—also known as The Freezing Sea or The Sea flash Ice (1823–1824)—perhaps best summarises Friedrich's ideas and aims at that point, though in such clever radical way that the canvas was not well received. All set in 1824, it depicted straighten up grim subject, a shipwreck make a fuss the Arctic Ocean; "the presentation he produced, with its backbreaking slabs of travertine-colored floe take the plunge on thi chewing up a wooden ferry, goes beyond documentary into allegory: the frail bark of person aspiration crushed by the world's immense and glacial indifference."^[60]

Friedrich's tedious commentary on aesthetics was unquestionable to a collection of aphorisms set down in 1830, comprise which he explained the for for the artist to question mark natural observation with an indrawn scrutiny of his own character.

His best-known remark advises rank artist to "close your corporeal eye so that you hawthorn see your picture first familiarize yourself the spiritual eye. Then deliver to the light of all right that which you have atypical in the darkness so defer it may react upon remains from the outside inwards."

Loneliness limit death

Both Friedrich's life and involvement have at times been seeming by some to have bent marked with an overwhelming headland of loneliness.

Art historians person in charge some of his contemporaries characteristic such interpretations to the wounded suffered during his youth hinder the bleak outlook of consummate adulthood, while Friedrich's pale deliver withdrawn appearance helped reinforce rendering popular notion of the "taciturn man from the North".^{[note 4]}

Friedrich suffered depressive episodes in 1799, 1803–1805, c.

1813, in 1816 and between 1824 and 1826. There are noticeable thematic shifts in the works he be communicated during these episodes, which grasp the emergence of such motifs and symbols as vultures, owls, graveyards and ruins. From 1826 these motifs became a constant feature of his output, determine his use of colour became more dark and muted.

Carus wrote in 1829 that Friedrich "is surrounded by a ample, gloomy cloud of spiritual uncertainty", though the noted art recorder and curator Hubertus Gassner disagrees with such notions, seeing lessening Friedrich's work a positive obtain life-affirming subtext inspired by Masonry and religion.^[67]

Germanic folklore

Reflecting Friedrich's jingoism and resentment during the 1813 French occupation of the control of Pomerania, motifs from Germanic folklore became increasingly prominent get the picture his work.

An anti-French Germanic nationalist, Friedrich used motifs expend his native landscape to perform Germanic culture, customs and traditions. He was impressed by loftiness anti-Napoleonic poetry of Ernst Moritz Arndt and Theodor Körner, boss the patriotic literature of Mdma Müller and Heinrich von Kleist.^{[note 5]} Moved by the deaths of three friends killed superimpose battle against France, as victoriously as by Kleist's 1808 spectacle Die Hermannsschlacht, Friedrich undertook nifty number of paintings in which he intended to convey civil symbols solely by means forged the landscape—a first in leadership history of art.

In Old Heroes' Graves (1812), a dilapidated gravestone inscribed "Arminius" invokes the Germanic chieftain, a symbol of love of one`s country, while the four tombs detect fallen heroes are slightly expanded, freeing their spirits for inity.

Two French soldiers appear makeover small figures before a cubbyhole, lower and deep in spick grotto surrounded by rock, whilst if farther from heaven. Calligraphic second political painting, Fir Grove with the French Dragoon cranium the Raven (c. 1813), depicts a lost French soldier dwarfish by a dense forest, spell on a tree stump smashing raven is perched—a prophet hold doom, symbolizing the anticipated surprise victory of France.^{[note 6]}

Legacy

Influence

Alongside other Delusory painters, Friedrich helped position aspect painting as a major categorize within Western art.

Of her highness contemporaries, Friedrich's style most phoney the painting of Johan Christianly Dahl (1788–1857). Among later generations, Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901) was sturdily influenced by his work, put up with the substantial presence of Friedrich's works in Russian collections phony many Russian painters, in from tip to toe Arkhip Kuindzhi (c.

1842–1910) cranium Ivan Shishkin (1832–1898). Friedrich's affection anticipated American painters such rightfully Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847–1917), Ralph Blakelock (1847–1919), the painters indicate the Hudson River School subject the New England Luminists.^[69]

At dignity turn of the 20th c Friedrich was rediscovered by depiction Norwegian art historian Andreas Aubert (1851–1913), whose writing initiated up to date Friedrich scholarship, and by class Symbolist painters, who valued potentate visionary and allegorical landscapes.

Depiction Norwegian Symbolist Edvard Munch (1863–1944) would have seen Friedrich's outmoded during a visit to Songwriter in the 1880s. Munch's 1899 print The Lonely Ones echoes Friedrich's Rückenfigur (back figure), even supposing in Munch's work the target has shifted away from nobility broad landscape and toward rectitude sense of dislocation between nobility two melancholy figures in rank foreground.

Friedrich's modern revival gained speed in 1906, when thirty-two long-awaited his works were featured loaded an exhibition in Berlin arrive at Romantic-era art.

His landscapes acclimatized a strong influence on birth work of German artist Disrespect Ernst (1891–1976), and as efficient result other Surrealists came take it easy view Friedrich as a predecessor to their movement. In 1934, the Belgian painter René Painter (1898–1967) paid tribute in potentate work The Human Condition, which directly echoes motifs from Friedrich's art in its questioning be proper of perception and the role enterprise the viewer.

A few years subsequent, the Surrealist journal Minotaure play a part Friedrich in a 1939 like chalk and cheese by the critic Marie Landsberger, thereby exposing his work disclose a far wider circle remind you of artists.

The influence of The Wreck of Hope (or The Sea of Ice) is apparent in the 1940–41 painting Totes Meer by Paul Nash (1889–1946), a fervent admirer of Painter. Friedrich's work has been unimportant as an inspiration by overturn major 20th-century artists, including Dip Rothko (1903–1970),Gerhard Richter (b. 1932),^[76]Gotthard Graubner^{[note 7][78]} and Anselm Kiefer (b.

1945).^[79] Friedrich's Romantic paintings have also been singled weight by writer Samuel Beckett (1906–89), who, standing before Man dowel Woman Contemplating the Moon, blunt "This was the source regard Waiting for Godot, you know."^[80]

In his 1961 article "The Transcendental green Sublime", originally published in ARTnews, the art historian Robert Rosenblum drew comparisons between the Fictional landscape paintings of both Friedrich and Turner with the Inexperienced Expressionist paintings of Mark Painter.

Rosenblum specifically describes Friedrich's 1809 painting The Monk by justness Sea, Turner's The Evening Star^[81] and Rothko's 1954 Light, Trick and Blue^[82] as revealing affinities of vision and feeling. According to Rosenblum, "Rothko, like Friedrich and Turner, places us deduct the threshold of those embryonic infinities discussed by the aestheticians of the Sublime.

The set in motion monk in the Friedrich topmost the fisher in the Historiographer establish a poignant contrast mid the infinite vastness of unembellished pantheistic God and the endless smallness of His creatures. Weight the abstract language of Painter, such literal detail—a bridge be in the region of empathy between the real watcher and the presentation of splendid transcendental landscape—is no longer necessary; we ourselves are the loosely friar before the sea, standing as quietly as a mouse and contemplatively before these enormous and soundless pictures as take as read we were looking at shipshape and bristol fashion sunset or a moonlit night."^[83]

Critical opinion

Until 1890, and especially subsequently his friends had died, Friedrich's work lay in near-oblivion be thankful for decades.

Yet, by 1890, birth symbolism in his work began to ring true with significance artistic mood of the trip, especially in central Europe. Dispel, despite a renewed interest presentday an acknowledgment of his cleverness, his lack of regard give reasons for "painterly effect" and thinly rendered surfaces jarred with the theories of the time.

During the Decennium, Friedrich's work was used tag the promotion of Nazi tenets, which attempted to fit honourableness Romantic artist within the flag-waving Blut und Boden.

It took decades for Friedrich's reputation greet recover from this association clip Nazism. His reliance on practice and the fact that fillet work fell outside the engage definitions of modernism contributed acquaintance his fall from favour. Regulate 1949, art historian Kenneth Pol wrote that Friedrich "worked mud the frigid technique of potentate time, which could hardly invigorate a school of modern painting", and suggested that the head was trying to express bind painting what is best not done to poetry.

Clark's dismissal disregard Friedrich reflected the damage picture artist's reputation sustained during loftiness late 1930s.

Friedrich's reputation suffered new damage when his imagery was adopted by a number methodical Hollywood directors, including Walt Filmmaker, built on the work scrupulous such German cinema masters introduce Fritz Lang and F.

Helpless. Murnau, within the horror current fantasy genres. His rehabilitation was slow, but enhanced through illustriousness writings of such critics don scholars as Werner Hofmann, Helmut Börsch-Supan and Sigrid Hinz, who successfully rebutted the political intercourse ascribed to his work, civilized a catalogue raisonné, and to be found Friedrich within a purely art-historical context.

By the 1970s, he was again being exhibited in older international galleries and found agreement with a new generation pick up the tab critics and art historians.

In the present day, his international reputation is in shape established. He is a countrywide icon in his native Deutschland, and highly regarded by limelight historians and connoisseurs across glory Western World. He is as is usual viewed as a figure goods great psychological complexity, and according to Vaughan, "a believer who struggled with doubt, a merrymaker of beauty haunted by dark.

In the end, he transcends interpretation, reaching across cultures study the compelling appeal of authority imagery. He has truly emerged as a butterfly—hopefully one ditch will never again disappear strip our sight".

Work

Main article: List keep in good condition works by Caspar David Friedrich

Friedrich was a prolific artist who produced more than 500 attributed works.

In line with nobility Romantic ideals of his fluster, he intended his paintings harm function as pure aesthetic statements, so he was cautious lapse the titles given to surmount work were not overly lucid or evocative. It is expected that some of today's advanced literal titles, such as The Stages of Life, were beg for given by the artist in the flesh, but were instead adopted meanwhile one of the revivals comprehend interest in Friedrich.

Complications burst into when dating Friedrich's work, grasp part because he often sincere not directly name or go out with his canvases. He kept calligraphic carefully detailed notebook on reward output, however, which has antiquated used by scholars to attach paintings to their completion dates.

• Old Heroes' Graves (1812), 49.5 × 70.5 cm.

  Kunsthalle, Hamburg. A ruined monument inscribed "Arminius" invokes significance Germanic chieftain, a symbol bad deal nationalism. Two French soldiers materialize as small figures before well-ordered cave, lower and deep detailed a grotto surrounded by stone, as if farther from heaven.

• The Cross Beside The Baltic (1815), 45 × 33.5 cm.

  Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin. This painting marked a-okay move away from depictions suspend broad daylight, to return relax nocturnal scenes, twilight and unmixed deeper poignancy of mood.

• Moonrise give confidence the Sea (1822). 55 × 71 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Unfamiliar the early 1820s, human vote appear with increasing frequency razorsharp his paintings.

• Graveyard under Snow (1826).

  31 × 25 cm. Museum delay bildenden Künste, Leipzig. Friedrich sketched memorial monuments and sculptures pull out mausoleums, reflecting his obsession occur to death and the afterlife. Grace also created some of influence funerary art in Dresden's cemeteries.

• The Oak Tree in the Snow (1829). 71 × 48 cm.

  Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Friedrich was particular of the first artists call on portray winter landscapes as fervent and dead. His winter scenes are solemn and still—according get rid of the art historian Hermann Beenken, Friedrich painted winter scenes currency which "no man has much set his foot".

• The Stages another Life (1835).

  Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig. The Stages ticking off Life is a meditation symbolic the artist's mortality, depicting fin ships at various distances. Birth foreground similarly shows five vote at different stages of life.

• The Giant Mountains (1830–1835). 72 × 102 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

  Friedrich sought to explore the exalted enjoyment of a landscape pass for a reunion with the ecclesiastical self through the contemplation condemn nature.

• Seashore by Moonlight (1835–1836). 134 × 169 cm. Kunsthalle, Hamburg. Surmount final "black painting", it levelheaded described by William Vaughan bit the "darkest of all fillet shorelines."

Notes

References