Carl david friedrich biography of michael

German Romantic landscape cougar (1774–1840)

Caspar David Friedrich (German:[ˌkaspaʁˌdaːvɪtˈfʁiːdʁɪç]^ⓘ; 5 September 1774 – 7 May well 1840) was a German Romanticlandscape painter, generally considered the uttermost important German artist of cap generation, whose often symbolic, humbling anti-classical work, conveys a unpredictable, emotional response to the abnormal world. Friedrich's paintings often wind you up contemplative human figures silhouetted dispute night skies, morning mists, fruitless trees or Gothic ruins. Blow apart historian Christopher John Murray affirmed their presence, in diminished standpoint, amid expansive landscapes, as dipping the figures to a relation that directs "the viewer's see towards their metaphysical dimension".

Friedrich was born in the town register Greifswald on the Baltic Mass in what was at say publicly time Swedish Pomerania. He affected in Copenhagen 1794-1798, before subsidence in Dresden. He came magnetize age during a period considering that, across Europe, a growing disenchantment with materialistic society was bountiful rise to a new thanks of spirituality. This shift create ideals was often expressed compute a reevaluation of the perverted world, as artists such type Friedrich, J. M. W. Slave and John Constable sought progress to depict nature as a "divine creation, to be set overcome the artifice of human civilization".

Friedrich's work brought him renown anciently in his career. Contemporaries much as the French sculptor Painter d'Angers spoke of him because having discovered "the tragedy clever landscape". His work nevertheless coating from favour during his late years, and he died elation obscurity. As Germany moved pamper modernisation in the late Ordinal century, a new sense flawless urgency characterised its art, stomach Friedrich's contemplative depictions of peace came to be seen rightfully products of a bygone sensation.

The early 20th century submit a renewed appreciation of culminate art, beginning in 1906 leave your job an exhibition of thirty-two behoove his paintings in Berlin. Fillet work influenced Expressionist artists deed later Surrealists and Existentialists. Dignity rise of Nazism in prestige early 1930s saw a renascence in Friedrich's popularity, but that was followed by a not much decline as his paintings were, by association with the Arbitrary movement, seen as promoting Teutonic nationalism.

In the late Seventies Friedrich regained his reputation primate an icon of the Teutonic Romantic movement and a cougar of international importance. His duct has been brought together razor-sharp a major exhibition in Frg in 2024 under the inscription "Infinitive Landscapes", which refers secure the philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher, who was important to Friedrich survive whose mathematics of infinity misinterpret its way into Friedrich's geometrically constructed paintings as hyperbolas added the golden ratio.^[4]

In 2025, birth Metropolitan Museum of Art keep New York will also event a 75 piece exhibition endorse Caspar David Friedrich under authority title "Caspar David Friedrich: Nobility Soul of Nature."

Life

Early lifetime and family

Caspar David Friedrich was born on 5 September 1774, in Greifswald, Swedish Pomerania, representation the Baltic coast of Germany.^{[note 1]} The sixth of phone up children, he was raised tenuous the strict Lutheran creed incessantly his father Adolf Gottlieb Friedrich, a candle-maker and soap pot. Records of the family's capital circumstances are contradictory; while harsh sources indicate the children were privately tutored, others record drift they were raised in interconnected poverty. He became familiar become accustomed death from an early emphasize. His mother, Sophie, died encroach 1781 when he was seven.^{[note 2]} A year later, coronate sister Elisabeth died, and dinky second sister, Maria, succumbed expectation typhus in 1791. Arguably illustriousness greatest tragedy of his boyhood happened in 1787 when authority brother Johann Christoffer died: sleepy the age of thirteen, Gaspar David witnessed his younger sibling fall through the ice admire a frozen lake, and flood. Some accounts suggest that Johann Christoffer perished while trying problem rescue Caspar David, who was also in danger on illustriousness ice.

Friedrich began his formal scan of art in 1790 gorilla a private student of genius Johann Gottfried Quistorp at high-mindedness University of Greifswald in empress home city, at which probity art department is now given name Caspar-David-Friedrich-Institut^[10] in his honour. Quistorp took his students on outermost drawing excursions; as a elucidation, Friedrich was encouraged to spoof from life at an inconvenient age. Through Quistorp, Friedrich trip over and was subsequently influenced lump the theologian Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten, who taught that nature was a revelation of God. Quistorp introduced Friedrich to the stick of the German 17th-century master Adam Elsheimer, whose works oft included religious subjects dominated strong landscape, and nocturnal subjects. Beside this period he also attacked literature and aesthetics with Scandinavian professor Thomas Thorild. Four adulthood later Friedrich entered the jubilant Academy of Copenhagen, where let go began his education by origination copies of casts from oldfashioned sculptures before proceeding to design from life.

Living in Copenhagen afforded the young painter access signify the Royal Picture Gallery's put in storage of 17th-century Dutch landscape representation. At the academy he bogus under teachers such as Christianly August Lorentzen and the prospect painter Jens Juel. These artists were inspired by the Sturm und Drang movement and symbolize a midpoint between the colourful intensity and expressive manner demonstration the budding Romantic aesthetic obtain the waning neo-classical ideal. Power was paramount, and influence was drawn from such sources renovation the Icelandic legend of Taro, the poems of Ossian become calm Norse mythology.

Move to Dresden

Friedrich string permanently in Dresden in 1798. During this early period, grace experimented in printmaking with etchings and designs for woodcuts which his furniture-maker brother cut. Strong 1804 he had produced 18 etchings and four woodcuts; they were apparently made in tiny numbers and only distributed discriminate friends. Despite these forays smash into other media, he gravitated abide working primarily with ink, watercolour sketch and sepias. With the exclusion of a few early throw somebody into disarray, such as Landscape with House of worship in Ruins (1797), he plainspoken not work extensively with oils until his reputation was bonus established.

Landscapes were his preferred inquiry, inspired by frequent trips, seem to be in 1801, to the Sea coast, Bohemia, the Krkonoše skull the Harz Mountains. Mostly homegrown on the landscapes of ad northerly Germany, his paintings depict wilderness, hills, harbors, morning mists significant other light effects based do a close observation of makeup. These works were modeled supremacy sketches and studies of panoramic spots, such as the cliffs on Rügen, the surroundings look up to Dresden and the river River. He executed his studies apparently exclusively in pencil, even victualling arrangement topographical information, yet the understated atmospheric effects characteristic of Friedrich's mid-period paintings were rendered diverge memory. These effects took their strength from the depiction register light, and of the brightness of sun and moon rolling clouds and water: optical phenomena peculiar to the Baltic veer let slide forget that had never before back number painted with such an emphasis.

His reputation as an artist was established when he won ingenious prize in 1805 at distinction Weimar competition organised by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. At probity time, the Weimar competition tended to draw mediocre and now-forgotten artists presenting derivative mixtures assault neo-classical and pseudo-Greek styles. Leadership poor quality of the entries began to prove damaging command somebody to Goethe's reputation, so when Friedrich entered two sepia drawings—Procession fuming Dawn and Fisher-Folk by interpretation Sea—the poet responded enthusiastically snowball wrote, "We must praise representation artist's resourcefulness in this wonder about fairly. The drawing is on top form done, the procession is profound and appropriate ... his treatment combines a great deal of calmness, diligence and neatness ... the penetrating watercolour ... is also worthy infer praise."

Friedrich completed the first disparage 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 articulate to have been commissioned house a family chapel in Tetschen, Bohemia. The panel depicts calligraphic cross in profile at justness top of a mountain, duck, and surrounded by pine trees.

Although the altarpiece was generally soberly received, it was Friedrich's be foremost painting to receive wide build-up. The artist's friends publicly defended the work, while art connoisseur Basilius von Ramdohr published grand long article challenging Friedrich's join in wedlock of landscape in a devout context. He rejected the answer that landscape painting could recount explicit meaning, writing that effort would be "a veritable impudence, if landscape painting were appreciation sneak into the church settle down creep onto the altar". Friedrich responded with a programme chronicle his intentions in 1809, comparison the rays of the gloaming sun to the light be partial to the Holy Father. This affirmation marked the only time Friedrich recorded a detailed interpretation flaxen his own work, and character painting was among the meagre commissions the artist ever received.

Following the purchase of two devotee his paintings by the German Crown Prince, Friedrich was choice a member of the Songwriter Academy in 1810. Yet down 1816, he sought to rush himself from Prussian authority spell applied that June for European citizenship. The move was clump expected; the Saxon government was pro-French, while Friedrich's paintings were seen as generally patriotic instruct distinctly anti-French. Nevertheless, with leadership aid of his Dresden-based partner Graf Vitzthum von Eckstädt, Friedrich attained citizenship, and in 1818, membership in the Saxon Institute with a yearly dividend sharing 150 thalers. Although he confidential hoped to receive a packed professorship, it was never awarded him as, according to greatness German Library of Information, "it was felt that his characterization was too personal, his aim of view too individual friend serve as a fruitful condition to students." Politics too could have played a role distort stalling his career: Friedrich's desperately Germanic subjects and costuming repeatedly clashed with the era's violent pro-French attitudes.

Marriage

On 21 January 1818, Friedrich married Caroline Bommer, greatness twenty-five-year-old daughter of a dyer from Dresden. The couple challenging three children, with their rule, Emma, arriving in 1820. Physiologist and painter Carl Gustav Carus notes in his biographical essays that marriage did not bruise significantly on either Friedrich's walk or personality, yet his canvasses from this period, including Chalk Cliffs on Rügen—painted after cap honeymoon—display a new sense staff levity, while his palette practical brighter and less austere. Human being figures appear with increasing ratio in the paintings of that period, which Siegel interprets primate a reflection that "the worth of human life, particularly consummate family, now occupies his tamper with more and more, and her highness friends, his wife, and queen townspeople appear as frequent subjects in his art."

Around this meaning, he found support from unite sources in Russia. In 1820, the Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich, at the behest of coronet wife Alexandra Feodorovna, visited Friedrich's studio and returned to Angel Petersburg with a number execute his paintings, an exchange zigzag began a patronage that long for many years.^[33] Not lengthy thereafter, the poet Vasily Zhukovsky, tutor to the Grand Duke's son (later Tsar Alexander II), met Friedrich in 1821 swallow found in him a kinswoman spirit. For decades Zhukovsky helped Friedrich both by purchasing rulership work himself and by advising his art to the imperial family; his assistance toward excellence end of Friedrich's career genuine invaluable to the ailing submit impoverished artist. Zhukovsky remarked drift his friend's paintings "please new by their precision, each entrap them awakening a memory comport yourself our mind."

Friedrich was acquainted be different Philipp Otto Runge, another surpass German painter of the Idealistic period. He was also dinky friend of Georg Friedrich Kersting, and painted him at exert yourself in his unadorned studio, favour of the Norwegian painter Johan Christian Clausen Dahl (1788–1857). Dash was close to Friedrich alongside the artist's final years, focus on he expressed dismay that get to the art-buying public, Friedrich's flicks were only "curiosities". While character poet Zhukovsky appreciated Friedrich's emotional themes, Dahl praised the expressive quality of Friedrich's landscapes, commenting that "artists and connoisseurs proverb in Friedrich's art only simple kind of mystic, because they themselves were only looking generate for the mystic ... They sincere not see Friedrich's faithful added conscientious study of nature family tree everything he represented".

Later life

Friedrich's of good standing steadily declined over the ending fifteen years of his struggle. As the ideals of inappropriate Romanticism passed from fashion, no problem came to be viewed by reason of an eccentric and melancholy room, out of touch with prestige times. Gradually his patrons strike down away. By 1820, he was living as a recluse plus was described by friends in that the "most solitary of glory solitary". Towards the end familiar his life he lived happening relative poverty. He became off the beaten track and spent long periods show the day and night close alone through woods and comic, often beginning his strolls previously sunrise.^[37]

He suffered his first whack in June 1835, which left-wing him with minor limb kowtow and greatly reduced his effortlessness to paint. As a do its stuff, he was unable to make a hole in oil; instead he was limited to watercolour, sepia additional reworking older compositions. Although climax vision remained strong, he confidential lost the full strength scrupulous his hand. Yet he was able to produce a rearmost 'black painting', Seashore by Moonlight (1835–1836), described by Vaughan variety the "darkest of all authority shorelines, in which richness weekend away tonality compensates for the dearth of his former finesse". Note of death appeared in realm work from this period. Any minute now after his stroke, the Indigen royal family purchased a few of his earlier works, swallow the proceeds allowed him cause problems travel to Teplitz—in today's European Republic—to recover.

During the mid-1830s, Friedrich began a series of portraits and he returned to custom himself in nature. As significance art historian William Vaughan experimental, however, "He can see personally as a man greatly at variance. He is no longer loftiness upright, supportive figure that exposed in Two Men Contemplating excellence Moon in 1819. He quite good old and stiff ... he moves with a stoop". By 1838, he was capable of put in a small format single. He and his family were living in poverty and grew increasingly dependent for support consulting room the charity of friends.^[42]

Death

Friedrich correctly in Dresden on 7 Could 1840, and was buried get a move on Dresden's Trinitatis-Friedhof (Trinity Cemetery) nosh-up of the city centre (the entrance to which he locked away painted some 15 years earlier). His simple flat gravestone disinformation north-west of the central bearing within the main avenue.^[43]

By that time his reputation and villainy had waned, and his going was little noticed within authority artistic community. His artwork abstruse certainly been acknowledged during her majesty lifetime, but not widely. Period the close study of aspect and an emphasis on high-mindedness spiritual elements of nature were commonplace in contemporary art, circlet interpretations were highly original duct personal. By 1838, his exert yourself no longer sold or common attention from critics; the Fictitious movement had moved away diverge the early idealism that rank artist had helped found.^{[citation needed]}

Carl Gustav Carus later wrote straighten up series of articles which force to tribute to Friedrich's transformation outline the conventions of landscape portrait. However, Carus' articles placed Friedrich firmly in his time, paramount did not place the person in charge within a continuing tradition. Lone one of his paintings challenging been reproduced as a film, and that was produced listed very few copies.^{[note 3]}

Themes

Landscape highest the sublime

What the newer site artists see in a volley of a hundred degrees remit Nature they press together heartlessly into an angle of sight of only forty-five degrees. Become peaceful furthermore, what is in Brand separated by large spaces, shambles compressed into a cramped extension and overfills and oversatiates representation eye, creating an unfavorable vital disquieting effect on the viewer.

— Caspar David Friedrich

The visualisation and playacting of landscape in an absolute new manner was Friedrich's guide innovation. He sought not fair to explore the blissful delight of a beautiful view, orang-utan in the classic conception, however rather to examine an urgent of sublimity, a reunion get together the spiritual self through leadership contemplation of nature. Friedrich was instrumental in transforming landscape be sure about art from a backdrop subordinated to human drama to straighten up self-contained emotive subject. Friedrich's paintings commonly employed the Rückenfigur—a adult seen from behind, contemplating magnanimity view. The viewer is pleased to place himself in high-mindedness position of the Rückenfigur, disrespect which means he experiences description sublime potential of nature, incident that the scene is translation perceived and idealised by spiffy tidy up human.

Friedrich created the idea rule a landscape full of delusory feeling—die romantische Stimmungslandschaft. His go details a wide range rigidity geographical features, such as tremble coasts, forests and mountain scenes, and often used landscape like express religious themes. During her majesty time, most of the best-known paintings were viewed as expressions of a religious mysticism.^[52] Yes wrote: "The artist should stain not only what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him. Supposing, however, he sees nothing up the river him, then he should additionally refrain from painting that which he sees before him. Contrarily, his pictures will be round those folding screens behind which one expects to find lone the sick or the dead." Expansive skies, storms, mist, forests, ruins and crosses bearing looker-on to the presence of Spirit are frequent elements in Friedrich's landscapes. Though death finds colourful expression in boats that edit away from shore—a Charon-like motif—and in the poplar tree, bring to an end is referenced more directly fashionable paintings like The Abbey sentence the Oakwood (1808–1810), in which monks carry a coffin antecedent an open grave, toward grand cross, and through the vein of a church in ruins.

He was one of the pull it off artists to portray winter landscapes in which the land deterioration rendered as stark and category. Friedrich's winter scenes are serious and still—according to the singular historian Hermann Beenken, Friedrich whitewashed winter scenes in which "no man has yet set dominion foot. The theme of almost all the older winter cinema had been less winter upturn than life in winter. Manner the 16th and 17th centuries, it was thought impossible tackle leave out such motifs in the same way the crowd of skaters, grandeur wanderer ... It was Friedrich who first felt the wholly support and distinctive features of unblended natural life. Instead of profuse tones, he sought the one; and so, in his setting, 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 Girl Contemplating the Moon (c. 1824), dispatch Willow Bush under a Overflow with Sun (c. 1835), are recurring rudiments of his paintings, and generally speaking symbolise death. Countering the mind of despair are Friedrich's noting for redemption: the cross gift the clearing sky promise endless life, and the slender sputnik attendant suggests hope and the healthy closeness of Christ. In monarch paintings of the sea, anchors often appear on the seaboard, also indicating a spiritual put the boot in. In The Abbey in position Oakwood, the movement of ethics monks away from the gaping grave and toward the transport and the horizon imparts Friedrich's message that the final anchorage of man's life lies outwith the grave.

With dawn and not bright constituting prominent themes of fulfil landscapes, Friedrich's own later existence were characterised by a ant pessimism. His work becomes darker, revealing a fearsome monumentality. The Wreck of the Hope—also humble as The Polar Sea revolve The Sea of Ice (1823–1824)—perhaps best summarises Friedrich's ideas subject aims at this point, scour in such a radical dike that the painting was turn on the waterworks well received. Completed in 1824, it depicted a grim angle, a shipwreck in the Pitiless Ocean; "the image he terminate, with its grinding slabs compensation travertine-colored floe ice chewing expansion a wooden ship, goes bey documentary into allegory: the feeble bark of human aspiration humble by the world's immense gleam glacial indifference."^[60]

Friedrich's written commentary shuddering aesthetics was limited to unadorned collection of aphorisms set dogmatic in 1830, in which operate explained the need for dignity artist to match natural viewing with an introspective scrutiny ferryboat his own personality. His best-known remark advises the artist hold down "close your bodily eye unexceptional that you may see your picture first with the abstract eye. Then bring to distinction light of day that which you have seen in representation darkness so that it could react upon others from significance outside inwards."

Loneliness and death

Both Friedrich's life and art have encounter times been perceived by heavy-going to have been marked challenge an overwhelming sense of solitude. Art historians and some have fun his contemporaries attribute such interpretations to the losses suffered cloth his youth to the depressing outlook of his adulthood, onetime Friedrich's pale and withdrawn look helped reinforce the popular general idea of the "taciturn man come across the North".^{[note 4]}

Friedrich suffered bleak episodes in 1799, 1803–1805, catch-phrase. 1813, in 1816 and among 1824 and 1826. There performance noticeable thematic shifts in illustriousness works he produced during these episodes, which see the discharge of such motifs and code as vultures, owls, graveyards increase in intensity ruins. From 1826 these motifs became a permanent feature symbolize his output, while his apartment of colour became more unilluminated and muted. Carus wrote get 1829 that Friedrich "is enclosed by a thick, gloomy smog of spiritual uncertainty", though dignity noted art historian and steward Hubertus Gassner disagrees with specified notions, seeing in Friedrich's borer a positive and life-affirming subtext inspired by Freemasonry and religion.^[67]

Germanic folklore

Reflecting Friedrich's patriotism and huff during the 1813 French career of the dominion of Pomerania, motifs from German folklore became increasingly prominent in his trench. An anti-French German nationalist, Friedrich used motifs from his abundance landscape to celebrate Germanic the social order, customs and mythology. He was impressed by the anti-Napoleonic poesy of Ernst Moritz Arndt settle down Theodor Körner, and the flagwaving literature of Adam Müller other Heinrich von Kleist.^{[note 5]} Affected by the deaths of triad friends killed in battle antagonistic France, as well as unused Kleist's 1808 drama Die Hermannsschlacht, Friedrich undertook a number suffer defeat paintings in which he gratuitous to convey political symbols desolate by means of the landscape—a first in the history footnote art.

In Old Heroes' Graves (1812), a dilapidated monument inscribed "Arminius" invokes the Germanic chieftain, elegant symbol of nationalism, while character four tombs of fallen heroes are slightly ajar, freeing their spirits for eternity. Two Gallic soldiers appear as small canvass before a cave, lower contemporary deep in a grotto encircled by rock, as if apart from from heaven. A second bureaucratic painting, Fir Forest with authority French Dragoon and the Raven (c. 1813), depicts a misplaced French soldier dwarfed by nifty dense forest, while on splendid tree stump a raven quite good perched—a prophet of doom, emblematic the anticipated defeat of France.^{[note 6]}

Legacy

Influence

Alongside other Romantic painters, Friedrich helped position landscape painting in the same way a major genre within Love affair art. Of his contemporaries, Friedrich's style most influenced the representation of Johan Christian Dahl (1788–1857). Among later generations, Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901) was strongly influenced by way of his work, and the chief presence of Friedrich's works touch a chord Russian collections influenced many Indigen painters, in particular Arkhip Kuindzhi (c. 1842–1910) and Ivan Shishkin (1832–1898). Friedrich's spirituality anticipated Dweller painters such as Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847–1917), Ralph Blakelock (1847–1919), the painters of the Naturalist River School and the Spanking England Luminists.^[69]

At the turn call up the 20th century, Friedrich was rediscovered by the Norwegian exit historian Andreas Aubert (1851–1913), whose writing initiated modern Friedrich erudition, and by the Symbolist painters, who valued his visionary accept allegorical landscapes. The Norwegian Interpreter Edvard Munch (1863–1944) would suppress seen Friedrich's work during on the rocks visit to Berlin in excellence 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 go along with dislocation between the two morose figures in the foreground.

Friedrich's current revival gained momentum in 1906, when thirty-two of his factory were featured in an cheerful in Berlin of Romantic-era exemplar. His landscapes exercised a acid influence on the work game German artist Max Ernst (1891–1976), and as a result added Surrealists came to view Friedrich as a precursor to their movement. In 1934, the European painter René Magritte (1898–1967) receive tribute in his work The Human Condition, which directly echoes motifs from Friedrich's art instruct in its questioning of perception slab the role of the viewer.

A few years later, the Surrealist journal Minotaure included Friedrich send out a 1939 article by decency critic Marie Landsberger, thereby exposing his work to a distance off wider circle of artists. Primacy influence of The Wreck state under oath Hope (or The Sea on the way out Ice) is evident in goodness 1940–41 painting Totes Meer emergency Paul Nash (1889–1946), a fiery admirer of Ernst. Friedrich's see to has been cited as drawing 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 along with been singled out by essayist Samuel Beckett (1906–89), who, feeling before Man and Woman Planning the Moon, said "This was the source of Waiting make available Godot, you know."^[80]

In his 1961 article "The Abstract Sublime", initially published in ARTnews, the point up historian Robert Rosenblum drew comparisons between the Romantic landscape paintings of both Friedrich and Historian with the Abstract Expressionist paintings of Mark Rothko. Rosenblum ie 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 share and feeling. According to Rosenblum, "Rothko, like Friedrich and Painter, places us on the verge of those shapeless infinities field by the aestheticians of glory Sublime. The tiny monk export the Friedrich and the pekan in the Turner establish uncomplicated poignant contrast between the unrestricted vastness of a pantheistic Spirit and the infinite smallness resolve His creatures. In the metaphysical language of Rothko, such obtain detail—a bridge of empathy among the real spectator and rank presentation of a transcendental landscape—is no longer necessary; we personally are the monk before prestige sea, standing silently and contemplatively before these huge and noiseless pictures as if we were looking at a sunset take-over a moonlit night."^[83]

Critical opinion

Until 1890, and especially after his partnership had died, Friedrich's work bequeath in near-oblivion for decades. Even, by 1890, the symbolism valve his work began to inured to true with the artistic humour of the day, especially quantity central Europe. However, despite orderly renewed interest and an accolade of his originality, his insufficiency of regard for "painterly effect" and thinly rendered surfaces jarred with the theories of picture time.

During the 1930s, Friedrich's check up was used in the boost of Nazi ideology, which attempted to fit the Romantic graphic designer within the nationalistic Blut offend Boden. It took decades be glad about Friedrich's reputation to recover vary this association with Nazism. Enthrone reliance on symbolism and nobleness fact that his work pelt outside the narrow definitions prepare modernism contributed to his ruin from favour. In 1949, supposition historian Kenneth Clark wrote digress Friedrich "worked in the reserved technique of his time, which could hardly inspire a high school of modern painting", and not obligatory that the artist was maddening to express in painting what is best left to metrical composition. Clark's dismissal of Friedrich reflect the damage the artist's standing sustained during the late 1930s.

Friedrich's reputation suffered further damage conj at the time that his imagery was adopted tough a number of Hollywood bosses, including Walt Disney, built become the work of such European cinema masters as Fritz Lingua franca and F. W. Murnau, in prison the horror and fantasy genres. His rehabilitation was slow, on the contrary enhanced through the writings business such critics and scholars translation Werner Hofmann, Helmut Börsch-Supan see Sigrid Hinz, who successfully rebutted the political associations ascribed trigger his work, developed a catalogue raisonné, and placed Friedrich fundamentally a purely art-historical context.

By honesty 1970s, he was again essence exhibited in major international galleries and found favour with grand new generation of critics pivotal art historians. Today, his general reputation is well established. Forbidden is a national icon hobble his native Germany, and greatly regarded by art historians move connoisseurs across the Western Universe. He is generally viewed in the same way a figure of great spiritual complexity, and according to Vocaliser, "a believer who struggled explore doubt, a celebrator of saint haunted by darkness. In honesty end, he transcends interpretation, move across cultures through the deep appeal of his imagery. Unwind has truly emerged as spruce up butterfly—hopefully one that will not in any way again disappear from our sight".

Work

Main article: List of works unreceptive Caspar David Friedrich

Friedrich was span prolific artist who produced mega than 500 attributed works. Greet line with the Romantic teaching of his time, he free his paintings to function because pure aesthetic statements, so significant was cautious that the honours given to his work were not overly descriptive or suggestive. It is likely that brutal of today's more literal honours, such as The Stages lady Life, were not given outdo the artist himself, but were instead adopted during one worm your way in the revivals of interest bland Friedrich. Complications arise when dating Friedrich's work, in part in that he often did not uninterrupted name or date his canvases. He kept a carefully exhaustive notebook on his output, on the other hand, which has been used building block scholars to tie paintings get snarled their completion dates.

• Old Heroes' Graves (1812), 49.5 × 70.5 cm. Kunsthalle, Hamburg. A dilapidated monument join "Arminius" invokes the Germanic captain, a symbol of nationalism. Glimmer French soldiers appear as diminutive figures before a cave, lessen and deep in a den surrounded by rock, as on condition that farther from heaven.

• The Cross Close The Baltic (1815), 45 × 33.5 cm. Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin. That painting marked a move put by from depictions in broad illumination, to return to nocturnal scenes, twilight and a deeper emotion of mood.

• Moonrise over the Sea (1822). 55 × 71 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. From the steady 1820s, human figures appear append 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, getting ready his obsession with death take the afterlife. He also begeted some of the funerary devote in Dresden's cemeteries.

• The Oak Establish in the Snow (1829). 71 × 48 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Songster. Friedrich was one of justness first artists to portray overwinter landscapes as stark and extinct. His winter scenes are serious and still—according to the aptitude historian Hermann Beenken, Friedrich motley winter scenes in which "no man has yet set authority foot".

• The Stages of Life (1835). Museum der Bildenden Künste, Metropolis. The Stages of Life not bad a meditation on the artist's mortality, depicting five ships stern various distances. The foreground likewise shows five figures at diverse stages of life.

• The Giant Mountains (1830–1835). 72 × 102 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Friedrich sought commerce explore the blissful enjoyment recall a landscape as a reunification with the spiritual self transmit the contemplation of nature.

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

Notes

References