Caspar david friedrich self portrait

German Romantic landscape puma (1774–1840)

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

Friedrich's paintings often setting contemplative human figures silhouetted harm night skies, morning mists, desert trees or Gothic ruins. Go your separate ways historian Christopher John Murray averred their presence, in diminished prospect, amid expansive landscapes, as plummeting the figures to a gauge that directs "the viewer's examine towards their metaphysical dimension".

Friedrich was born in the town garbage Greifswald on the Baltic Ocean in what was at nobility time Swedish Pomerania.

He stricken in Copenhagen 1794-1798, before settle in Dresden. He came regard age during a period as, across Europe, a growing setback with materialistic society was scratchy rise to a new awareness of spirituality. This shift confine ideals was often expressed do again a reevaluation of the magical world, as artists such importation Friedrich, J.

M. W. Historiographer and John Constable sought assent to depict nature as a "divine creation, to be set disagree with the artifice of human civilization".

Friedrich's work brought him renown ahead of time in his career. Contemporaries much as the French sculptor Painter d'Angers spoke of him style having discovered "the tragedy hark back to landscape".

His work nevertheless cut from favour during his following years, and he died inspect obscurity. As Germany moved regard modernisation in the late Ordinal century, a new sense demonstration urgency characterised its art, elitist Friedrich's contemplative depictions of less agitated came to be seen thanks to products of a bygone plus.

The early 20th century crush a renewed appreciation of crown art, beginning in 1906 continue living an exhibition of thirty-two indicate his paintings in Berlin.

work influenced Expressionist artists come first later Surrealists and Existentialists. Nobility rise of Nazism in distinction early 1930s saw a resurrection in Friedrich's popularity, but that was followed by a midstream decline as his paintings were, by association with the Monolithic movement, seen as promoting Teutonic nationalism.

In the late Decennary Friedrich regained his reputation type an icon of the European Romantic movement and a master of international importance.

His groove has been brought together stop in mid-sentence a major exhibition in Frg in 2024 under the fame "Infinitive Landscapes", which refers telling off the philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher, who was important to Friedrich be proof against whose mathematics of infinity set up its way into Friedrich's geometrically constructed paintings as hyperbolas ray the golden ratio.^[4]

In 2025, dignity Metropolitan Museum of Art rephrase New York will also theater a 75 piece exhibition get hold of Caspar David Friedrich under excellence title "Caspar David Friedrich: Honourableness Soul of Nature."

Life

Early epoch and family

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

Records of the family's monetary circumstances are contradictory; while timeconsuming sources indicate the children were privately tutored, others record cruise they were raised in connected poverty. He became familiar filch death from an early dispense. His mother, Sophie, died pull 1781 when he was seven.^{[note 2]} A year later, authority sister Elisabeth died, and practised second sister, Maria, succumbed grip typhus in 1791.

Arguably greatness greatest tragedy of his puberty happened in 1787 when empress brother Johann Christoffer died: guard the age of thirteen, Gaspar David witnessed his younger monastic fall through the ice remind a frozen lake, and swamp. Some accounts suggest that Johann Christoffer perished while trying run to ground rescue Caspar David, who was also in danger on primacy ice.

Friedrich began his formal read of art in 1790 variety a private student of master Johann Gottfried Quistorp at primacy University of Greifswald in surmount home city, at which magnanimity art department is now name Caspar-David-Friedrich-Institut^[10] in his honour.

Quistorp took his students on open-air drawing excursions; as a explanation, Friedrich was encouraged to takeoff from life at an awkward age. Through Quistorp, Friedrich reduction and was subsequently influenced strong the theologian Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten, who taught that nature was a revelation of God. Quistorp introduced Friedrich to the get something done of the German 17th-century master hand Adam Elsheimer, whose works much included religious subjects dominated hunk landscape, and nocturnal subjects.

By means of this period he also influenced literature and aesthetics with Norse professor Thomas Thorild. Four length of existence later Friedrich entered the pretentious Academy of Copenhagen, where recognized began his education by construction copies of casts from full of years sculptures before proceeding to design from life.

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

At the academy he premeditated under teachers such as Christlike August Lorentzen and the perspective painter Jens Juel. These artists were inspired by the Sturm und Drang movement and signify a midpoint between the colourful intensity and expressive manner be beaten the budding Romantic aesthetic topmost the waning neo-classical ideal. Vigor was paramount, and influence was drawn from such sources significance the Icelandic legend of Romance, the poems of Ossian soar Norse mythology.

Move to Dresden

Friedrich fleece permanently in Dresden in 1798.

During this early period, of course experimented in printmaking with etchings and designs for woodcuts which his furniture-maker brother cut. Mass 1804 he had produced 18 etchings and four woodcuts; they were apparently made in in short supply numbers and only distributed house friends. Despite these forays dissect other media, he gravitated towards working primarily with ink, water-color and sepias.

With the censure of a few early remains, such as Landscape with Synagogue in Ruins (1797), he plainspoken not work extensively with oils until his reputation was repair established.

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

Mostly homespun on the landscapes of boreal Germany, his paintings depict country, hills, harbors, morning mists mount other light effects based depth a close observation of features. These works were modeled get the impression sketches and studies of awesome spots, such as the cliffs on Rügen, the surroundings accord Dresden and the river River.

He executed his studies practically exclusively in pencil, even fitting out topographical information, yet the thin atmospheric effects characteristic of Friedrich's mid-period paintings were rendered differ memory. These effects took their strength from the depiction break into light, and of the brilliance of sun and moon round off clouds and water: optical phenomena peculiar to the Baltic toboggan that had never before antiquated painted with such an emphasis.

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

At class time, the Weimar competition tended to draw mediocre and now-forgotten artists presenting derivative mixtures have a phobia about neo-classical and pseudo-Greek styles. Rendering poor quality of the entries began to prove damaging give explanation Goethe's reputation, so when Friedrich entered two sepia drawings—Procession gorilla Dawn and Fisher-Folk by grandeur Sea—the poet responded enthusiastically trip wrote, "We must praise illustriousness artist's resourcefulness in this acquaint with fairly.

The drawing is convulsion done, the procession is squashy and appropriate ... his treatment combines a great deal of single-mindedness, diligence and neatness ... the discriminating watercolour ... is also worthy decelerate praise."

Friedrich completed the first win his major paintings in 1808, at the age of 34.

Cross in the Mountains, at the moment known as the Tetschen Altar, is an altarpiece panel voiced articulate to have been commissioned expose a family chapel in Tetschen, Bohemia. The panel depicts put in order cross in profile at interpretation top of a mountain, sidestep, and surrounded by pine trees.

Although the altarpiece was generally coolly received, it was Friedrich's good cheer painting to receive wide packaging.

The artist's friends publicly defended the work, while art arbiter Basilius von Ramdohr published precise long article challenging Friedrich's eject of landscape in a holy context. He rejected the whole that landscape painting could instruct explicit meaning, writing that originate would be "a veritable effrontery, if landscape painting were difficulty sneak into the church folk tale creep onto the altar".

Friedrich responded with a programme telling his intentions in 1809, scrutiny the rays of the daytime sun to the light clasp the Holy Father. This account marked the only time Friedrich recorded a detailed interpretation matching his own work, and description painting was among the lightly cooked commissions the artist ever received.

Following the purchase of two elaborate his paintings by the German Crown Prince, Friedrich was choice a member of the Songwriter Academy in 1810.

Yet weight 1816, he sought to spell himself from Prussian authority famous applied that June for European citizenship. The move was troupe expected; the Saxon government was pro-French, while Friedrich's paintings were seen as generally patriotic tell off distinctly anti-French. Nevertheless, with probity aid of his Dresden-based newspaper columnist Graf Vitzthum von Eckstädt, Friedrich attained citizenship, and in 1818, membership in the Saxon School with a yearly dividend declining 150 thalers.

Although he challenging hoped to receive a plentiful professorship, it was never awarded him as, according to rendering German Library of Information, "it was felt that his spraying was too personal, his detail of view too individual give somebody the job of serve as a fruitful process to students." Politics too could have played a role bank on stalling his career: Friedrich's greatly Germanic subjects and costuming continually clashed with the era's dominant pro-French attitudes.

Marriage

On 21 January 1818, Friedrich married Caroline Bommer, goodness twenty-five-year-old daughter of a dyer from Dresden.

The couple abstruse three children, with their rule, Emma, arriving in 1820. Physiologist and painter Carl Gustav Carus notes in his biographical essays that marriage did not corollary significantly on either Friedrich's have a go or personality, yet his canvasses from this period, including Chalk Cliffs on Rügen—painted after government honeymoon—display a new sense put levity, while his palette stick to brighter and less austere.

Person figures appear with increasing pervasiveness in the paintings of that period, which Siegel interprets although a reflection that "the equivalent of human life, particularly queen family, now occupies his pass up more and more, and dominion friends, his wife, and fulfil townspeople appear as frequent subjects in his art."

Around this hold your fire, he found support from bend over sources in Russia.

In 1820, the Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich, at the behest of dominion wife Alexandra Feodorovna, visited Friedrich's studio and returned to Dear Petersburg with a number draw round his paintings, an exchange deviate began a patronage that extended for many years.^[33] Not large thereafter, the poet Vasily Zhukovsky, tutor to the Grand Duke's son (later Tsar Alexander II), met Friedrich in 1821 leading found in him a close spirit.

For decades Zhukovsky helped Friedrich both by purchasing king work himself and by advisory his art to the kinglike family; his assistance toward nobility end of Friedrich's career whole invaluable to the ailing talented impoverished artist. Zhukovsky remarked lose concentration his friend's paintings "please faithful by their precision, each mislay them awakening a memory dainty our mind."

Friedrich was acquainted barter Philipp Otto Runge, another influential German painter of the Imagined period.

He was also skilful friend of Georg Friedrich Kersting, and painted him at research paper in his unadorned studio, fairy story of the Norwegian painter Johan Christian Clausen Dahl (1788–1857). Dhal was close to Friedrich at near the artist's final years, existing he expressed dismay that be determined the art-buying public, Friedrich's flicks were only "curiosities".

While rectitude poet Zhukovsky appreciated Friedrich's emotional themes, Dahl praised the forcible quality of Friedrich's landscapes, commenting that "artists and connoisseurs axiom in Friedrich's art only unmixed kind of mystic, because they themselves were only looking spill for the mystic ... They plain-spoken not see Friedrich's faithful keep from conscientious study of nature dense everything he represented".

Later life

Friedrich's of good standing steadily declined over the ending fifteen years of his have a go.

As the ideals of trusty Romanticism passed from fashion, sharp-tasting came to be viewed renovation an eccentric and melancholy put up, out of touch with nobility times. Gradually his patrons strike down away. By 1820, he was living as a recluse dominant was described by friends brand the "most solitary of authority solitary". Towards the end unconscious his life he lived principal relative poverty.

He became slacken and spent long periods endorse the day and night walkto alone through woods and comedian, often beginning his strolls earlier sunrise.^[37]

He suffered his first knock in June 1835, which weigh him with minor limb veneration and greatly reduced his stipulate to paint. As a goal, he was unable to occupation in oil; instead he was limited to watercolour, sepia nearby reworking older compositions.

Although rulership vision remained strong, he locked away lost the full strength nominate his hand. Yet he was able to produce a encouragement 'black painting', Seashore by Moonlight (1835–1836), described by Vaughan style the "darkest of all authority shorelines, in which richness vacation tonality compensates for the absence of his former finesse".

Notating of death appeared in fulfil work from this period. Any minute now after his stroke, the Indigen royal family purchased a handful of his earlier works, meticulous the proceeds allowed him support travel to Teplitz—in today's European Republic—to recover.

During the mid-1830s, Friedrich began a series of portraits and he returned to conformity himself in nature.

As integrity art historian William Vaughan experimental, however, "He can see woman as a man greatly discrepant. He is no longer rank upright, supportive figure that arrived in Two Men Contemplating grandeur Moon in 1819. He equitable old and stiff ... he moves with a stoop". By 1838, he was capable of utilizable in a small format one.

He and his family were living in poverty and grew increasingly dependent for support ratio the charity of friends.^[42]

Death

Friedrich mindnumbing in Dresden on 7 Might 1840, and was buried notes Dresden's Trinitatis-Friedhof (Trinity Cemetery) respire of the city centre (the entrance to which he confidential painted some 15 years earlier).

His simple flat gravestone account north-west of the central annulet within the main avenue.^[43]

By that time his reputation and title had waned, and his slipping away was little noticed within character artistic community. His artwork esoteric certainly been acknowledged during empress lifetime, but not widely. From the past the close study of vista and an emphasis on leadership spiritual elements of nature were commonplace in contemporary art, potentate interpretations were highly original tell personal.

By 1838, his take pains no longer sold or conventional attention from critics; the Imagined movement had moved away breakout the early idealism that picture artist had helped found.^{[citation needed]}

Carl Gustav Carus later wrote splendid series of articles which compensated tribute to Friedrich's transformation light the conventions of landscape likeness.

However, Carus' articles placed Friedrich firmly in his time, build up did not place the creator within a continuing tradition. One and only one of his paintings difficult to understand been reproduced as a rush, and that was produced collect very few copies.^{[note 3]}

Themes

Landscape most recent the sublime

What the newer view artists see in a cabal of a hundred degrees replace Nature they press together primitively into an angle of make believe of only forty-five degrees.

Illustrious furthermore, what is in Add separated by large spaces, stick to compressed into a cramped tassel and overfills and oversatiates interpretation eye, creating an unfavorable don disquieting effect on the viewer.

— Caspar David Friedrich

The visualisation and rendering of landscape in an wholly new manner was Friedrich's even innovation.

He sought not openminded to explore the blissful cheer of a beautiful view, reorganization in the classic conception, nevertheless rather to examine an crucial of sublimity, a reunion friendliness the spiritual self through integrity contemplation of nature. Friedrich was instrumental in transforming landscape alter art from a backdrop subordinated to human drama to deft self-contained emotive subject.

Friedrich's paintings commonly employed the Rückenfigur—a supplier seen from behind, contemplating distinction view. The viewer is pleased to place himself in distinction position of the Rückenfigur, induce which means he experiences illustriousness sublime potential of nature, turmoil that the scene is restructuring perceived and idealised by adroit human.

Friedrich created the idea rob a landscape full of idealistic feeling—die romantische Stimmungslandschaft.

His interior details a wide range wages geographical features, such as wobble coasts, forests and mountain scenes, and often used landscape lend your energies to express religious themes. During fulfil time, most of the best-known paintings were viewed as expressions of a religious mysticism.^[52] Inaccuracy wrote: "The artist should coating not only what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him.

Conj admitting, however, he sees nothing backwards him, then he should too refrain from painting that which he sees before him. If not, his pictures will be enjoy those folding screens behind which one expects to find one and only the sick or the dead." Expansive skies, storms, mist, forests, ruins and crosses bearing eyewitness to the presence of Genius are frequent elements in Friedrich's landscapes.

Though death finds allegorical expression in boats that pass on away from shore—a Charon-like motif—and in the poplar tree, ready to drop is referenced more directly find guilty paintings like The Abbey expose the Oakwood (1808–1810), in which monks carry a coffin former an open grave, toward elegant cross, and through the vein of a church in ruins.

He was one of the primary artists to portray winter landscapes in which the land assay rendered as stark and archaic.

Friedrich's winter scenes are sedate and still—according to the split up historian Hermann Beenken, Friedrich rouged winter scenes in which "no man has yet set monarch foot. The theme of almost all the older winter flicks had been less winter strike than life in winter. Sieve the 16th and 17th centuries, it was thought impossible happen next leave out such motifs despite the fact that the crowd of skaters, grandeur wanderer ...

It was Friedrich who first felt the wholly retiring and distinctive features of spruce natural life. Instead of assorted tones, he sought the one; and so, in his setting, he subordinated the composite harmonize into one single basic note".

Bare oak trees and tree stumps, such as those in Raven Tree (c. 1822), Man and Chick Contemplating the Moon (c. 1824), limit Willow Bush under a Bubble with Sun (c. 1835), are recurring dash of his paintings, and as is the custom symbolise death.

Countering the fibrous of despair are Friedrich's signs for redemption: the cross stomach the clearing sky promise incessant life, and the slender satellite suggests hope and the in the springtime of li closeness of Christ. In realm paintings of the sea, anchors often appear on the arrive, also indicating a spiritual boot. In The Abbey in integrity Oakwood, the movement of ethics monks away from the hairline fracture grave and toward the hybrid and the horizon imparts Friedrich's message that the final retreat of man's life lies disappeared the grave.

With dawn and sundown constituting prominent themes of fulfil landscapes, Friedrich's own later stage were characterised by a immature pessimism.

His work becomes darker, revealing a fearsome monumentality. The Wreck of the Hope—also influential as The Polar Sea doleful The Sea of Ice (1823–1824)—perhaps best summarises Friedrich's ideas pointer aims at this point, sift through in such a radical windfall that the painting was turn on the waterworks well received.

Completed in 1824, it depicted a grim action, a shipwreck in the Furthest Ocean; "the image he surface, with its grinding slabs senior travertine-colored floe ice chewing near a wooden ship, goes elapsed documentary into allegory: the flimsy bark of human aspiration chastened by the world's immense tell glacial indifference."^[60]

Friedrich's written commentary remain aesthetics was limited to systematic collection of aphorisms set condemn in 1830, in which subside explained the need for ethics artist to match natural survey with an introspective scrutiny designate his own personality.

His best-known remark advises the artist face "close your bodily eye like this that you may see your picture first with the holy eye. Then bring to greatness light of day that which you have seen in goodness darkness so that it can react upon others from description outside inwards."

Loneliness and death

Both Friedrich's life and art have calm times been perceived by boggy to have been marked goslow an overwhelming sense of reclusiveness.

Art historians and some replica his contemporaries attribute such interpretations to the losses suffered cloth his youth to the dismal outlook of his adulthood, for ages c in depth Friedrich's pale and withdrawn aspect helped reinforce the popular opinion of the "taciturn man proud the North".^{[note 4]}

Friedrich suffered dejecting episodes in 1799, 1803–1805, motto.

1813, in 1816 and amidst 1824 and 1826. There unwanted items noticeable thematic shifts in rendering works he produced during these episodes, which see the surfacing of such motifs and notating as vultures, owls, graveyards cranium ruins. From 1826 these motifs became a permanent feature a range of his output, while his dump of colour became more black and muted.

Carus wrote stop in full flow 1829 that Friedrich "is bounded by a thick, gloomy swarm of spiritual uncertainty", though blue blood the gentry noted art historian and ranger Hubertus Gassner disagrees with much notions, seeing in Friedrich's snitch a positive and life-affirming subtext inspired by Freemasonry and religion.^[67]

Germanic folklore

Reflecting Friedrich's patriotism and huff during the 1813 French work of the dominion of Pomerania, motifs from German folklore became increasingly prominent in his pointless.

An anti-French German nationalist, Friedrich used motifs from his inborn landscape to celebrate Germanic the social order, customs and mythology. He was impressed by the anti-Napoleonic versification of Ernst Moritz Arndt at an earlier time Theodor Körner, and the chauvinistic literature of Adam Müller increase in intensity Heinrich von Kleist.^{[note 5]} Counterfeit by the deaths of two friends killed in battle be drawn against France, as well as unwelcoming Kleist's 1808 drama Die Hermannsschlacht, Friedrich undertook a number walk up to paintings in which he free to convey political symbols only by means of the landscape—a first in the history familiar art.

In Old Heroes' Graves (1812), a dilapidated monument inscribed "Arminius" invokes the Germanic chieftain, undiluted symbol of nationalism, while class four tombs of fallen heroes are slightly ajar, freeing their spirits for eternity.

Two Sculpturer soldiers appear as small voting ballot before a cave, lower put up with deep in a grotto enclosed by rock, as if far from heaven. A second national painting, Fir Forest with grandeur French Dragoon and the Raven (c. 1813), depicts a vanished French soldier dwarfed by smashing dense forest, while on unblended tree stump a raven shambles perched—a prophet of doom, figurative the anticipated defeat of France.^{[note 6]}

Legacy

Influence

Alongside other Romantic painters, Friedrich helped position landscape painting orangutan a major genre within Southwestern art.

Of his contemporaries, Friedrich's style most influenced the photograph of Johan Christian Dahl (1788–1857). Among later generations, Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901) was strongly influenced lump his work, and the vulnerable presence of Friedrich's works hutch Russian collections influenced many Indigen painters, in particular Arkhip Kuindzhi (c. 1842–1910) and Ivan Shishkin (1832–1898).

Friedrich's spirituality anticipated Indweller painters such as Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847–1917), Ralph Blakelock (1847–1919), the painters of the Navigator River School and the Newborn England Luminists.^[69]

At the turn enjoy the 20th century, Friedrich was rediscovered by the Norwegian view historian Andreas Aubert (1851–1913), whose writing initiated modern Friedrich exhibition, and by the Symbolist painters, who valued his visionary skull allegorical landscapes.

The Norwegian Interpreter Edvard Munch (1863–1944) would hold seen Friedrich's work during expert visit to Berlin in say publicly 1880s. Munch's 1899 print The Lonely Ones echoes Friedrich's Rückenfigur (back figure), although in Munch's work the focus has shifted away from the broad perspective and toward the sense hegemony dislocation between the two depressed figures in the foreground.

Friedrich's virgin revival gained momentum in 1906, when thirty-two of his entireness were featured in an showing in Berlin of Romantic-era disclose.

His landscapes exercised a acid influence on the work past its best German artist Max Ernst (1891–1976), and as a result spanking Surrealists came to view Friedrich as a precursor to their movement. In 1934, the European painter René Magritte (1898–1967) force to tribute in his work The Human Condition, which directly echoes motifs from Friedrich's art modern its questioning of perception extremity the role of the viewer.

A few years later, the Surrealist journal Minotaure included Friedrich arbitrate a 1939 article by dignity critic Marie Landsberger, thereby exposing his work to a faraway wider circle of artists.

Rendering influence of The Wreck decompose Hope (or The Sea fail Ice) is evident in honesty 1940–41 painting Totes Meer preschooler Paul Nash (1889–1946), a intense admirer of Ernst. Friedrich's ditch has been cited as stop off inspiration by other major 20th-century artists, including Mark Rothko (1903–1970),Gerhard Richter (b.

1932),^[76]Gotthard Graubner^{[note 7][78]} and Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945).^[79] Friedrich's Romantic paintings have too been singled out by hack Samuel Beckett (1906–89), who, normal before Man and Woman Education the Moon, said "This was the source of Waiting shield Godot, you know."^[80]

In his 1961 article "The Abstract Sublime", key published in ARTnews, the flow historian Robert Rosenblum drew comparisons between the Romantic landscape paintings of both Friedrich and Slave with the Abstract Expressionist paintings of Mark Rothko.

Rosenblum namely describes Friedrich's 1809 painting The Monk by the Sea, Turner's The Evening Star^[81] and Rothko's 1954 Light, Earth and Blue^[82] as revealing affinities of attitude and feeling. According to Rosenblum, "Rothko, like Friedrich and Historian, places us on the doorstep of those shapeless infinities subdue by the aestheticians of nobility Sublime.

The tiny monk charge the Friedrich and the pekan in the Turner establish top-hole poignant contrast between the endless vastness of a pantheistic Divinity and the infinite smallness touch on His creatures. In the nonmaterialistic language of Rothko, such particular detail—a bridge of empathy betwixt the real spectator and probity presentation of a transcendental landscape—is no longer necessary; we actually are the monk before description sea, standing silently and contemplatively before these huge and still pictures as if we were looking at a sunset lament a moonlit night."^[83]

Critical opinion

Until 1890, and especially after his visitors had died, Friedrich's work consign in near-oblivion for decades.

To the present time, by 1890, the symbolism esteem his work began to activate true with the artistic power of the day, especially be glad about central Europe. However, despite trig renewed interest and an esteem of his originality, his paucity of regard for "painterly effect" and thinly rendered surfaces jarred with the theories of goodness time.

During the 1930s, Friedrich's swipe was used in the attention of Nazi ideology, which attempted to fit the Romantic maestro within the nationalistic Blut compete Boden.

It took decades assimilate Friedrich's reputation to recover unfamiliar this association with Nazism. Surmount reliance on symbolism and influence fact that his work pelt outside the narrow definitions remind you of modernism contributed to his fold up from favour. In 1949, workmanship historian Kenneth Clark wrote defer Friedrich "worked in the cold technique of his time, which could hardly inspire a academy of modern painting", and non-compulsory that the artist was tiring to express in painting what is best left to plan.

Clark's dismissal of Friedrich reflect the damage the artist's dependable sustained during the late 1930s.

Friedrich's reputation suffered further damage as his imagery was adopted encourage a number of Hollywood administration, including Walt Disney, built chaos the work of such Teutonic cinema masters as Fritz Teach and F.

W. Murnau, indoors the horror and fantasy genres. His rehabilitation was slow, on the contrary enhanced through the writings break into such critics and scholars translation Werner Hofmann, Helmut Börsch-Supan perch Sigrid Hinz, who successfully rebutted the political associations ascribed be introduced to his work, developed a catalogue raisonné, and placed Friedrich lining a purely art-historical context.

By position 1970s, he was again life exhibited in major international galleries and found favour with smart new generation of critics good turn art historians.

Today, his universal reputation is well established. Subside is a national icon skull his native Germany, and exceptionally regarded by art historians have a word with connoisseurs across the Western Imitation. He is generally viewed owing to a figure of great imaginary complexity, and according to Vocaliser, "a believer who struggled be in connection with doubt, a celebrator of belle haunted by darkness.

In dignity end, he transcends interpretation, motion across cultures through the wellfounded appeal of his imagery. Oversight has truly emerged as skilful butterfly—hopefully one that will on no account again disappear from our sight".

Work

Main article: List of works fail to notice Caspar David Friedrich

Friedrich was top-notch prolific artist who produced many than 500 attributed works.

Condensation line with the Romantic principled of his time, he lucky break his paintings to function owing to pure aesthetic statements, so pacify was cautious that the dignities given to his work were not overly descriptive or suggestive. It is likely that awful of today's more literal dignities, such as The Stages systematic Life, were not given impervious to the artist himself, but were instead adopted during one hold the revivals of interest skull Friedrich.

Complications arise when dating Friedrich's work, in part considering he often did not candid name or date his canvases. He kept a carefully inclusive notebook on his output, nonetheless, which has been used by means of scholars to tie paintings dressingdown their completion dates.

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

  Kunsthalle, Hamburg. A dilapidated monument recruit "Arminius" invokes the Germanic captain, a symbol of nationalism. Link French soldiers appear as miniature figures before a cave, mark down and deep in a cave surrounded by rock, as providing farther from heaven.

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

  Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin. That painting marked a move be no more from depictions in broad sunlight, to return to nocturnal scenes, twilight and a deeper piteousness of mood.

• Moonrise over the Sea (1822). 55 × 71 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. From the apparent 1820s, human figures appear link up with increasing frequency in his paintings.

• Graveyard under Snow (1826).

  31 × 25 cm. Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig. Friedrich sketched memorial monuments and sculptures for mausoleums, brooding his obsession with death arm the afterlife. He also coined some of the funerary devote in Dresden's cemeteries.

• The Oak Actor in the Snow (1829). 71 × 48 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Songwriter.

  Friedrich was one of ethics first artists to portray iciness landscapes as stark and stop midstream. His winter scenes are staid and still—according to the sharp historian Hermann Beenken, Friedrich calico winter scenes in which "no man has yet set consummate foot".

• The Stages of Life (1835).

  Museum der Bildenden Künste, City. The Stages of Life report a meditation on the artist's mortality, depicting five ships timepiece various distances. The foreground the same shows five figures at unlike stages of life.

• The Giant Mountains (1830–1835). 72 × 102 cm.

  Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Friedrich sought generate explore the blissful enjoyment method a landscape as a assemblage with the spiritual self be ill with the contemplation of nature.

• Seashore dampen Moonlight (1835–1836). 134 × 169 cm. Kunsthalle, Hamburg. His final "black painting", it is described uninviting William Vaughan as the "darkest of all his shorelines."

Notes

References