The German romantic
painter Caspar David Friedrich, b. Sept. 5, 1774, d. May 7, 1840,
was one of the greatest exponents in European art of the symbolic
landscape.
He studied at the Academy
in Copenhagen (1794-98), and subsequently settled in Dresden, often
traveling to other parts of Germany. Friedrich's landscapes are
based entirely on those of northern Germany and are beautiful
renderings of trees, hills, harbors, morning mists, and other light
effects based on a close observation of nature.
Some of Friedrich's
best-known paintings are expressions of a religious mysticism. In
1808 he exhibited one of his most controversial paintings, The Cross
in the Mountains (Gemaldegalerie, Dresden), in which--for the first
time in Christian art--an altarpiece was conceived in terms of a
pure landscape. The cross, viewed obliquely from behind, is an
insignificant element in the composition. More important are the
dominant rays of the evening sun, which the artist said depicted the
setting of the old, pre-Christian world. The mountain symbolizes an
immovable faith, while the fir trees are an allegory of hope.
Friedrich painted several other important compositions in which
crosses dominate a landscape.
Even some of Friedrich's
apparently nonsymbolic paintings contain inner meanings, clues to
which are provided either by the artist's writings or those of his
literary friends. For example, a landscape showing a ruined abbey in
the snow, Abbey with Oak Trees (1810; Schloss Charlottenburg,
Berlin), can be appreciated on one level as a bleak, winter scene,
but the painter also intended the composition to represent both the
church shaken by the Reformation and the transitoriness of earthly
things.
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The Cross on the Mountain
(120 Kb); Kunstmuseum at Dusseldorf
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Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
1818; Oil on canvas, 94 x 74.8 cm; Kunsthalle, Hamburg
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Morning
1821; Oil on canvas, 22 x 30.5 cm; Niedersachsisches
Landesmuseum, Hanover
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Solitary Tree
1821; Oil on canvas, 55 x 71 cm; National Gallery, West Berlin
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The Tree of Crows
1822 (90 Kb); Oil; Louvre
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Riesengebirge
1835 (90 Kb); Oil on canvas, 73.5 x 102.5 cm (29 x 40 in);
Hermitage, St. Petersburg
From Nicolas
Pioch
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