![]() ![]() Septem, remarks that Friedrich made several copies of the Dresden picture. ![]() 19–29 expanded in Werner Busch, Caspar David Friedrich: Ästhetik und Religion, 2003, pp. The widely diverging interpretations accorded to this small picture-pagan, nature-mystical, political, or exclusively Christian-tend to obliterate its simple yet deeply contemplative mood (Werner Busch, "Zu Verständnis und Interpretation romantischer Kunst," in Werner Busch et al., Romantik, 1987, pp. The landscape is imaginary, as is the juxtaposition of the emblematic oak, fir, rock, and branch they are, however, based on precise studies after nature that Friedrich had made in various regions at different times and combined here in a single composition (see Notes). Symbol-laden elements line the winding forest path: the evergreen fir tree, a dead oak, a rock, and a large broken-off branch. This composition is unusual for Friedrich in that it is asymmetrical, and the landscape relatively crowded. The staunchly patriotic Friedrich deliberately ignored the 1819 royal degree that forbade this dress, seen as a type of “demagogues’ uniform,” and continued to show his figures in Old German costume until his death. These students opposed the ultraconservative policies being enforced in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. Both men’s attire-the beret and cape of the figure on the right and the cap and coat of the one on the left-conform to the Old German dress code that had been adopted in 1815 by radical German students. They follow in the tradition of the wanderers who, as personifications of restless yearning, roam through Romantic novels, poems, and music. Both figures are seen from the back so that the viewer can identify with their communion with nature, in which the Romantics saw a manifestation of the sublime. The mood of piously shared contemplation relates to the fascination with the moon experienced in poetry, literature, philosophy, and music of the time. They pause on their evening walk through a late autumnal forest to contemplate the sinking moon and Venus, the evening star. Contemporary sources have identified the two men as the forty-five-year-old Friedrich and his talented colleague, the twenty-five-year-old August Heinrich (1794–1822). Suffused with rose-mauve light, the present scene conveys the greatest sense of serenity. Infrared photographs have established that Friedrich made no underdrawings, and his painting is so fluid that the forms appear less detailed than in the other two versions. Here, Friedrich retained the luminosity of the Berlin canvas yet reintroduced the two male figures found in the Dresden composition. 1824, Nationalgalerie, Berlin see Notes). In the second version, the two protagonists are a man and a woman, and the sky is changed to a rose-mauve dusk (ca. In the first version, a rust-brown haze envelops sky and landscape, creating a nocturnal mood (1819, Dresden Gemäldegalerie see Notes). This work, painted about 1830, is the third variant of one of Friedrich’s most cited and reproduced paintings. 83–88.) With time, however, he came to be recognized as one of the most important figures of German Romanticism and as a guiding light to fellow artists, most notably the Norwegian painter Johan Christian Dahl (1788–1857). 11–12, and Werner Hofmann, ed., Caspar David Friedrich, 1774–1840: Kunst um 1800, exh. Friedrich died in poverty and near obscurity in Dresden. Indeed, during the 1820s his pictures began to lose favor with a public who preferred the faithfully rendered scenes of the younger generation of artists of the Düsseldorf School. Although he earned professional success, including royal patronage, his meditative, often barren landscapes, rich in spiritual associations, challenged and perplexed many of his contemporaries. Friedrich began to paint in oils on canvas in 1807. From the beginning of his career, Friedrich favored the subject of landscape, drawing his motifs mainly from two regions in Germany: the mountains of the Riesengebirge and of Bohemia as well as the northern Baltic coast and the island of Rügen. After studying at the Copenhagen Art Academy, in 1798 he settled in Dresden, then a center of the German Romantic movement. Caspar David Friedrich was born in Greifswald, a small town on the Baltic Sea.
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