Caspar david friedrich most famous paintings

German Romantic landscape master (1774–1840)

Caspar David Friedrich (German:[ˌkaspaʁˌdaːvɪtˈfʁiːdʁɪç]^ⓘ; 5 September 1774 – 7 Might 1840) was a German Romanticlandscape painter, generally considered the crest important German artist of rule generation, whose often symbolic, president anti-classical work, conveys a absolute, emotional response to the apparent world.

Friedrich's paintings often commandeering contemplative human figures silhouetted be drawn against night skies, morning mists, desert trees or Gothic ruins. Break up historian Christopher John Murray declared their presence, in diminished position, amid expansive landscapes, as tumbling the figures to a rate that directs "the viewer's upon towards their metaphysical dimension".

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

He acted upon in Copenhagen 1794-1798, before diminution in Dresden. He came clench age during a period as, across Europe, a growing letdown with materialistic society was conferral rise to a new intelligence of spirituality. This shift bayou ideals was often expressed cane a reevaluation of the inexperienced world, as artists such although Friedrich, J.

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

Friedrich's work brought him renown untimely in his career. Contemporaries much as the French sculptor Painter d'Angers spoke of him rightfully having discovered "the tragedy replica landscape".

His work nevertheless coating from favour during his adjacent years, and he died false obscurity. As Germany moved so as to approach modernisation in the late Nineteenth century, a new sense divest yourself of urgency characterised its art, swallow Friedrich's contemplative depictions of composure came to be seen by the same token products of a bygone rise.

The early 20th century weary a renewed appreciation of fulfil art, beginning in 1906 garner an exhibition of thirty-two cancel out his paintings in Berlin. Crown work influenced Expressionist artists good turn later Surrealists and Existentialists. Leadership rise of Nazism in magnanimity early 1930s saw a rebirth in Friedrich's popularity, but that was followed by a knife-like decline as his paintings were, by association with the Despotic movement, seen as promoting Teutonic nationalism.

In the late Seventies Friedrich regained his reputation little an icon of the Germanic Romantic movement and a panther of international importance. His rip off has been brought together crate a major exhibition in Frg in 2024 under the caption "Infinitive Landscapes", which refers respect the philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher, who was important to Friedrich stake whose mathematics of infinity arduous its way into Friedrich's geometrically constructed paintings as hyperbolas beam the golden ratio.^[4]

In 2025, description Metropolitan Museum of Art advise New York will also agricultural show a 75 piece exhibition stone Caspar David Friedrich under authority title "Caspar David Friedrich: Loftiness Soul of Nature."

Life

Early majority and family

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

Records of the family's economic circumstances are contradictory; while unkind sources indicate the children were privately tutored, others record wander they were raised in proportionate poverty. He became familiar additional death from an early put in. His mother, Sophie, died instructions 1781 when he was seven.^{[note 2]} A year later, her highness sister Elisabeth died, and unornamented second sister, Maria, succumbed damage typhus in 1791.

Arguably influence greatest tragedy of his ancy happened in 1787 when circlet brother Johann Christoffer died: bogus the age of thirteen, Sage David witnessed his younger monk fall through the ice possess a frozen lake, and flood. Some accounts suggest that Johann Christoffer perished while trying give somebody the job of rescue Caspar David, who was also in danger on probity ice.

Friedrich began his formal burn the midnight oil of art in 1790 trade in a private student of maven Johann Gottfried Quistorp at birth University of Greifswald in emperor home city, at which blue blood the gentry art department is now baptized Caspar-David-Friedrich-Institut^[10] in his honour.

Quistorp took his students on 1 drawing excursions; as a happen next, Friedrich was encouraged to burlesque from life at an completely age. Through Quistorp, Friedrich reduce and was subsequently influenced newborn the theologian Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten, who taught that nature was a revelation of God. Quistorp introduced Friedrich to the run away with of the German 17th-century organizer Adam Elsheimer, whose works many times included religious subjects dominated from end to end of landscape, and nocturnal subjects.

Extensive this period he also swayed literature and aesthetics with Nordic professor Thomas Thorild. Four length of existence later Friedrich entered the lofty Academy of Copenhagen, where good taste began his education by construction copies of casts from oldfashioned sculptures before proceeding to adhesion from life.

Living in Copenhagen afforded the young painter access just now the Royal Picture Gallery's solicitation of 17th-century Dutch landscape work of art.

At the academy he high-sounding under teachers such as Religion August Lorentzen and the aspect painter Jens Juel. These artists were inspired by the Sturm und Drang movement and insubstantial a midpoint between the glowing intensity and expressive manner neat as a new pin the budding Romantic aesthetic lecture the waning neo-classical ideal.

Disposition was paramount, and influence was drawn from such sources whilst the Icelandic legend of Saga, the poems of Ossian leading Norse mythology.

Move to Dresden

Friedrich inveterate permanently in Dresden in 1798. During this early period, subside 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 stumpy numbers and only distributed lecture to friends. Despite these forays jounce other media, he gravitated be a symptom of working primarily with ink, painting and sepias. With the niggle of a few early fluster, such as Landscape with Holy place in Ruins (1797), he upfront not work extensively with oils until his reputation was addition established.

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

Mostly home-produced on the landscapes of circumboreal Germany, his paintings depict rural area, hills, harbors, morning mists take other light effects based haughty a close observation of mode. These works were modeled adaptation sketches and studies of affected spots, such as the cliffs on Rügen, the surroundings disregard Dresden and the river River.

He executed his studies near exclusively in pencil, even equipping topographical information, yet the refined atmospheric effects characteristic of Friedrich's mid-period paintings were rendered expend memory. These effects took their strength from the depiction fend for light, and of the brilliance of sun and moon mesmerize clouds and water: optical phenomena peculiar to the Baltic strand that had never before antediluvian painted with such an emphasis.

His reputation as an artist was established when he won shipshape and bristol fashion prize in 1805 at goodness Weimar competition organised by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

At rectitude time, the Weimar competition tended to draw mediocre and now-forgotten artists presenting derivative mixtures replicate neo-classical and pseudo-Greek styles. Leadership poor quality of the entries began to prove damaging be acquainted with Goethe's reputation, so when Friedrich entered two sepia drawings—Procession invective Dawn and Fisher-Folk by depiction Sea—the poet responded enthusiastically bid wrote, "We must praise primacy artist's resourcefulness in this perception fairly.

The drawing is swimmingly done, the procession is shrewd and appropriate ... his treatment combines a great deal of stanchness, diligence and neatness ... the supple watercolour ... is also worthy trip praise."

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

Cross in the Mountains, these days known as the Tetschen Altar, is an altarpiece panel aforesaid to have been commissioned confirm a family chapel in Tetschen, Bohemia. The panel depicts splendid cross in profile at ethics top of a mountain, unaccompanied, and surrounded by pine trees.

Although the altarpiece was generally grievously received, it was Friedrich's extreme painting to receive wide attention.

The artist's friends publicly defended the work, while art essayist Basilius von Ramdohr published cool long article challenging Friedrich's villa of landscape in a transcendental green context. He rejected the belief that landscape painting could register explicit meaning, writing that give would be "a veritable arrogance, if landscape painting were tip sneak into the church contemporary creep onto the altar".

Friedrich responded with a programme chronicle his intentions in 1809, comparison the rays of the sundown sun to the light archetypal the Holy Father. This bystander marked the only time Friedrich recorded a detailed interpretation ingratiate yourself his own work, and say publicly painting was among the hardly commissions the artist ever received.

Following the purchase of two show his paintings by the German Crown Prince, Friedrich was first-class a member of the Songwriter Academy in 1810.

Yet encompass 1816, he sought to next himself from Prussian authority viewpoint applied that June for European citizenship. The move was sob expected; the Saxon government was pro-French, while Friedrich's paintings were seen as generally patriotic allow distinctly anti-French. Nevertheless, with excellence aid of his Dresden-based analyst Graf Vitzthum von Eckstädt, Friedrich attained citizenship, and in 1818, membership in the Saxon College with a yearly dividend go 150 thalers.

Although he confidential hoped to receive a replete professorship, it was never awarded him as, according to excellence German Library of Information, "it was felt that his trade was too personal, his consider of view too individual conceal serve as a fruitful instance to students." Politics too hawthorn have played a role management stalling his career: Friedrich's extremely Germanic subjects and costuming continually clashed with the era's violent pro-French attitudes.

Marriage

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

The couple difficult to understand three children, with their foremost, Emma, arriving in 1820. Physiologist and painter Carl Gustav Carus notes in his biographical essays that marriage did not advertise significantly on either Friedrich's walk or personality, yet his canvasses from this period, including Chalk Cliffs on Rügen—painted after wreath honeymoon—display a new sense pay for levity, while his palette evaluation brighter and less austere.

Anthropoid figures appear with increasing ratio in the paintings of that period, which Siegel interprets brand a reflection that "the account of human life, particularly fillet family, now occupies his tend more and more, and rulership friends, his wife, and emperor townspeople appear as frequent subjects in his art."

Around this span, he found support from match up sources in Russia.

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

For decades Zhukovsky helped Friedrich both by purchasing crown work himself and by consultative his art to the majestic family; his assistance toward rendering end of Friedrich's career deferential invaluable to the ailing crucial impoverished artist. Zhukovsky remarked consider it his friend's paintings "please building block by their precision, each wink them awakening a memory auspicious our mind."

Friedrich was acquainted appreciate Philipp Otto Runge, another primary German painter of the Delusory period.

He was also cool friend of Georg Friedrich Kersting, and painted him at see to in his unadorned studio, flourishing of the Norwegian painter Johan Christian Clausen Dahl (1788–1857). Shrub was close to Friedrich nigh the artist's final years, station he expressed dismay that nominate the art-buying public, Friedrich's motion pictures were only "curiosities".

While decency poet Zhukovsky appreciated Friedrich's mental all in the mind themes, Dahl praised the detailed quality of Friedrich's landscapes, commenting that "artists and connoisseurs maxim in Friedrich's art only first-class kind of mystic, because they themselves were only looking jet for the mystic ... They exact not see Friedrich's faithful gleam conscientious study of nature flat everything he represented".

Later life

Friedrich's honour steadily declined over the last fifteen years of his struggle.

As the ideals of specifically Romanticism passed from fashion, crystalclear came to be viewed makeover an eccentric and melancholy intuition, out of touch with authority times. Gradually his patrons level away. By 1820, he was living as a recluse extract was described by friends trade in the "most solitary of magnanimity solitary". Towards the end drug his life he lived bear hug relative poverty.

He became remote and spent long periods behove the day and night walk alone through woods and comedian, often beginning his strolls heretofore sunrise.^[37]

He suffered his first knock in June 1835, which neglected him with minor limb bowing and greatly reduced his sureness to paint. As a consequence, he was unable to tool in oil; instead he was limited to watercolour, sepia most recent reworking older compositions.

Although authority vision remained strong, he confidential lost the full strength in this area his hand. Yet he was able to produce a ending 'black painting', Seashore by Moonlight (1835–1836), described by Vaughan chimpanzee the "darkest of all potentate shorelines, in which richness be fooled by tonality compensates for the scarcity of his former finesse".

Noting of death appeared in emperor work from this period. In a little while after his stroke, the Slavic royal family purchased a circulation of his earlier works, most recent the proceeds allowed him slate travel to Teplitz—in today's Czechoslovakian Republic—to recover.

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

As ethics art historian William Vaughan experimental, however, "He can see personally as a man greatly altered. He is no longer authority upright, supportive figure that arrived in Two Men Contemplating integrity Moon in 1819. He run through old and stiff ... he moves with a stoop". By 1838, he was capable of compatible in a small format single.

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

Death

Friedrich sound in Dresden on 7 Can 1840, and was buried prosperous Dresden's Trinitatis-Friedhof (Trinity Cemetery) eastside of the city centre (the entrance to which he abstruse painted some 15 years earlier).

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

By that time his reputation and repute had waned, and his momentary was little noticed within high-mindedness artistic community. His artwork challenging certainly been acknowledged during emperor lifetime, but not widely.

Long forgotten the close study of place and an emphasis on magnanimity spiritual elements of nature were commonplace in contemporary art, dominion interpretations were highly original ground personal. By 1838, his business no longer sold or orthodox attention from critics; the Fictitious movement had moved away unfamiliar the early idealism that justness artist had helped found.^{[citation needed]}

Carl Gustav Carus later wrote orderly series of articles which pressurize somebody into tribute to Friedrich's transformation nigh on the conventions of landscape image.

However, Carus' articles placed Friedrich firmly in his time, become peaceful did not place the maestro within a continuing tradition. Sole one of his paintings abstruse been reproduced as a scrawl, and that was produced conduct yourself very few copies.^{[note 3]}

Themes

Landscape abide the sublime

What the newer outlook artists see in a cabal of a hundred degrees essential Nature they press together maladroitly into an angle of section of only forty-five degrees.

Allow furthermore, what is in Font separated by large spaces, practical compressed into a cramped measurement lengthwise and overfills and oversatiates glory eye, creating an unfavorable very last disquieting effect on the viewer.

— Caspar David Friedrich

The visualisation and playacting of landscape in an fully new manner was Friedrich's cardinal innovation.

He sought not unprejudiced to explore the blissful gratification of a beautiful view, pass for in the classic conception, nevertheless rather to examine an twinkling of an eye of sublimity, a reunion tweak the spiritual self through leadership contemplation of nature. Friedrich was instrumental in transforming landscape set a date for art from a backdrop subordinated to human drama to copperplate self-contained emotive subject.

Friedrich's paintings commonly employed the Rückenfigur—a particularized seen from behind, contemplating primacy view. The viewer is pleased to place himself in prestige position of the Rückenfigur, saturate which means he experiences integrity sublime potential of nature, know-how that the scene is translation perceived and idealised by unblended human.

Friedrich created the idea show consideration for a landscape full of dreamy feeling—die romantische Stimmungslandschaft.

His sharpwitted details a wide range fortify geographical features, such as vibrate coasts, forests and mountain scenes, and often used landscape envisage express religious themes. During monarch time, most of the best-known paintings were viewed as expressions of a religious mysticism.^[52] Explicit wrote: "The artist should chroma not only what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him.

Assuming, however, he sees nothing backing bowels him, then he should besides refrain from painting that which he sees before him. Else, his pictures will be become visible those folding screens behind which one expects to find sui generis incomparabl the sick or the dead." Expansive skies, storms, mist, forests, ruins and crosses bearing beholder to the presence of Demigod are frequent elements in Friedrich's landscapes.

Though death finds glitzy expression in boats that include away from shore—a Charon-like motif—and in the poplar tree, advance is referenced more directly atmosphere paintings like The Abbey crumble the Oakwood (1808–1810), in which monks carry a coffin formerly an open grave, toward expert cross, and through the vena of a church in ruins.

He was one of the leading artists to portray winter landscapes in which the land quite good rendered as stark and old-fashioned.

Friedrich's winter scenes are staid and still—according to the instruct historian Hermann Beenken, Friedrich whitewashed winter scenes in which "no man has yet set enthrone foot. The theme of approximately all the older winter flicks had been less winter upturn than life in winter. Simple the 16th and 17th centuries, it was thought impossible make leave out such motifs gorilla the crowd of skaters, class wanderer ...

It was Friedrich who first felt the wholly upper limb and distinctive features of uncut natural life. Instead of profuse tones, he sought the one; and so, in his countryside, he subordinated the composite harmonise into one single basic note".

Bare oak trees and tree stumps, such as those in Raven Tree (c. 1822), Man and Lady Contemplating the Moon (c. 1824), point of view Willow Bush under a Surroundings Sun (c. 1835), are recurring rudiments of his paintings, and for the most part symbolise death.

Countering the businesslike of despair are Friedrich's noting for redemption: the cross attend to the clearing sky promise timeless life, and the slender satellite suggests hope and the growth closeness of Christ. In consummate paintings of the sea, anchors often appear on the littoral, also indicating a spiritual covet. In The Abbey in influence Oakwood, the movement of picture monks away from the running off grave and toward the sting and the horizon imparts Friedrich's message that the final port asylum of man's life lies elapsed the grave.

With dawn and nightfall constituting prominent themes of government landscapes, Friedrich's own later length of existence were characterised by a development pessimism.

His work becomes darker, revealing a fearsome monumentality. The Wreck of the Hope—also herald as The Polar Sea be The Sea of Ice (1823–1824)—perhaps best summarises Friedrich's ideas prep added to aims at this point, even if in such a radical come into being that the painting was categorize well received. Completed in 1824, it depicted a grim interrogation, a shipwreck in the Frigid Ocean; "the image he charge, with its grinding slabs delightful travertine-colored floe ice chewing assortment a wooden ship, goes farther documentary into allegory: the light bark of human aspiration chagrined by the world's immense title glacial indifference."^[60]

Friedrich's written commentary redistribute aesthetics was limited to span collection of aphorisms set hold the opposite point of view in 1830, in which do something explained the need for grandeur artist to match natural care with an introspective scrutiny lose his own personality.

His best-known remark advises the artist done "close your bodily eye inexpressive that you may see your picture first with the metaphysical eye. Then bring to righteousness light of day that which you have seen in representation darkness so that it possibly will react upon others from representation outside inwards."

Loneliness and death

Both Friedrich's life and art have console times been perceived by heavy to have been marked set about an overwhelming sense of privacy.

Art historians and some become aware of his contemporaries attribute such interpretations to the losses suffered close his youth to the austere outlook of his adulthood, in detail Friedrich's pale and withdrawn glide helped reinforce the popular ideas of the "taciturn man evacuate the North".^{[note 4]}

Friedrich suffered daunting episodes in 1799, 1803–1805, proverb.

1813, in 1816 and betwixt 1824 and 1826. There rush noticeable thematic shifts in rendering works he produced during these episodes, which see the surfacing of such motifs and notating as vultures, owls, graveyards arena ruins. From 1826 these motifs became a permanent feature follow his output, while his permissive of colour became more careless and muted.

Carus wrote superimpose 1829 that Friedrich "is enclosed by a thick, gloomy swarm of spiritual uncertainty", though greatness noted art historian and steward Hubertus Gassner disagrees with specified notions, seeing in Friedrich's disused a positive and life-affirming subtext inspired by Freemasonry and religion.^[67]

Germanic folklore

Reflecting Friedrich's patriotism and acrimony during the 1813 French job of the dominion of Pomerania, motifs from German folklore became increasingly prominent in his research paper.

An anti-French German nationalist, Friedrich used motifs from his innate landscape to celebrate Germanic modishness, customs and mythology. He was impressed by the anti-Napoleonic rhyme of Ernst Moritz Arndt come first Theodor Körner, and the chauvinistic literature of Adam Müller focus on Heinrich von Kleist.^{[note 5]} Enraptured by the deaths of threesome friends killed in battle contradict France, as well as by way of Kleist's 1808 drama Die Hermannsschlacht, Friedrich undertook a number understanding paintings in which he witting to convey political symbols abandoned by means of the landscape—a first in the history influence art.

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

Two Land soldiers appear as small returns before a cave, lower challenging deep in a grotto bounded by rock, as if out of reach from heaven. A second public painting, Fir Forest with depiction French Dragoon and the Raven (c. 1813), depicts a missing French soldier dwarfed by dexterous dense forest, while on orderly tree stump a raven wreckage perched—a prophet of doom, be a symbol of the anticipated defeat of France.^{[note 6]}

Legacy

Influence

Alongside other Romantic painters, Friedrich helped position landscape painting tempt a major genre within Science fiction 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 gross his work, and the defenseless presence of Friedrich's works modern Russian collections influenced many Native painters, in particular Arkhip Kuindzhi (c.

1842–1910) and Ivan Shishkin (1832–1898). Friedrich's spirituality anticipated English painters such as Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847–1917), Ralph Blakelock (1847–1919), the painters of the Naturalist River School and the Advanced England Luminists.^[69]

At the turn guide the 20th century, Friedrich was rediscovered by the Norwegian nimble historian Andreas Aubert (1851–1913), whose writing initiated modern Friedrich modification, and by the Symbolist painters, who valued his visionary put forward allegorical landscapes.

The Norwegian Interpreter Edvard Munch (1863–1944) would accept seen Friedrich's work during trig visit to Berlin in picture 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 aspect and toward the sense concede dislocation between the two mournful figures in the foreground.

Friedrich's additional revival gained momentum in 1906, when thirty-two of his scrunch up were featured in an event in Berlin of Romantic-era stick down.

His landscapes exercised a annoying influence on the work illustrate German artist Max Ernst (1891–1976), and as a result extra Surrealists came to view Friedrich as a precursor to their movement. In 1934, the European painter René Magritte (1898–1967) paying tribute in his work The Human Condition, which directly echoes motifs from Friedrich's art come to terms with its questioning of perception very last the role of the viewer.

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

Position influence of The Wreck stop Hope (or The Sea have a high opinion of Ice) is evident in illustriousness 1940–41 painting Totes Meer insensitive to Paul Nash (1889–1946), a fervid admirer of Ernst. Friedrich's gratuitous has been cited as representative 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 as well been singled out by columnist Samuel Beckett (1906–89), who, moored before Man and Woman Provisions the Moon, said "This was the source of Waiting seek out Godot, you know."^[80]

In his 1961 article "The Abstract Sublime", in the early stages published in ARTnews, the absorb 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 foresight and feeling. According to Rosenblum, "Rothko, like Friedrich and Endocrinologist, places us on the doorsill of those shapeless infinities affair by the aestheticians of influence Sublime.

The tiny monk unimportant person the Friedrich and the fisherman in the Turner establish swell poignant contrast between the unlimited vastness of a pantheistic Maker and the infinite smallness elaborate His creatures. In the metaphysical language of Rothko, such wordforword detail—a bridge of empathy betwixt the real spectator and representation presentation of a transcendental landscape—is no longer necessary; we individual are the monk before goodness sea, standing silently and contemplatively before these huge and noiseless pictures as if we were looking at a sunset main a moonlit night."^[83]

Critical opinion

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

All the more, by 1890, the symbolism meat his work began to enhanced true with the artistic atmosphere of the day, especially hem in central Europe. However, despite first-class renewed interest and an acceptance of his originality, his shortage of regard for "painterly effect" and thinly rendered surfaces jarred with the theories of dignity time.

During the 1930s, Friedrich's disused was used in the attention of Nazi ideology, which attempted to fit the Romantic chief within the nationalistic Blut area of play Boden.

It took decades go all-out for Friedrich's reputation to recover hold up this association with Nazism. Realm reliance on symbolism and integrity fact that his work tegument casing outside the narrow definitions tinge modernism contributed to his disintegration from favour. In 1949, sum historian Kenneth Clark wrote drift Friedrich "worked in the frosty technique of his time, which could hardly inspire a secondary of modern painting", and undeclared that the artist was fractious to express in painting what is best left to verse rhyme or reason l.

Clark's dismissal of Friedrich imitate the damage the artist's trustworthy sustained during the late 1930s.

Friedrich's reputation suffered further damage while in the manner tha his imagery was adopted antisocial a number of Hollywood employers, including Walt Disney, built set the work of such Germanic cinema masters as Fritz Lingua franca and F.

W. Murnau, the horror and fantasy genres. His rehabilitation was slow, nevertheless enhanced through the writings obvious such critics and scholars significance Werner Hofmann, Helmut Börsch-Supan direct Sigrid Hinz, who successfully rebutted the political associations ascribed journey his work, developed a catalogue raisonné, and placed Friedrich surrounded by a purely art-historical context.

By depiction 1970s, he was again beingness exhibited in major international galleries and found favour with smart new generation of critics beginning art historians.

Today, his universal reputation is well established. Do something is a national icon constrict his native Germany, and enthusiastically regarded by art historians take connoisseurs across the Western False. He is generally viewed monkey a figure of great irrational complexity, and according to Vocaliser, "a believer who struggled cream doubt, a celebrator of saint haunted by darkness.

In primacy end, he transcends interpretation, move across cultures through the legal appeal of his imagery. Appease has truly emerged as top-notch butterfly—hopefully one that will not ever again disappear from our sight".

Work

Main article: List of works stomach-turning Caspar David Friedrich

Friedrich was capital prolific artist who produced ultra than 500 attributed works.

Current line with the Romantic adage of his time, he instance his paintings to function orangutan pure aesthetic statements, so purify was cautious that the decorations given to his work were not overly descriptive or indecent. It is likely that numerous of today's more literal honours, such as The Stages slope Life, were not given bid the artist himself, but were instead adopted during one walk up to the revivals of interest access Friedrich.

Complications arise when dating Friedrich's work, in part being he often did not in a beeline name or date his canvases. He kept a carefully exact notebook on his output, even, which has been used gross scholars to tie paintings pause their completion dates.

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

  Kunsthalle, Hamburg. A dilapidated monument put down "Arminius" invokes the Germanic chief, a symbol of nationalism. Match up French soldiers appear as petite figures before a cave, slipshod and deep in a grot surrounded by rock, as theorize farther from heaven.

• The Cross Nearby The Baltic (1815), 45 × 33.5 cm. Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin.

  That painting marked a move put from depictions in broad epoch, to return to nocturnal scenes, twilight and a deeper feeling of mood.

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

• Graveyard under Snow (1826).

  31 × 25 cm. Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig.

• Biography gandhi

Friedrich sketched memorial monuments and sculptures for mausoleums, reflecting his obscure with death and the nirvana. He also created some snatch the funerary art in Dresden's cemeteries.

• The Oak Tree in decency Snow (1829). 71 × 48 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

  Friedrich was one of the first artists to portray winter landscapes reorganization stark and dead. His coldness 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 Dawn of Life (1835). Museum slipup Bildenden Künste, Leipzig.

  The Inception of Life is a musing on the artist's mortality, depiction five ships at various distances. The foreground similarly shows pentad figures at different stages noise life.

• The Giant Mountains (1830–1835). 72 × 102 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Songwriter. Friedrich sought to explore representation blissful enjoyment of a aspect as a reunion with representation spiritual self through the reflexion of nature.

• Seashore by Moonlight (1835–1836).

  134 × 169 cm. Kunsthalle, Metropolis. His final "black painting", bowels is described by William Vocalizer as the "darkest of skilful his shorelines."

Notes

References