001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 2 27.03.12 11:13 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 3 27.03.12 11:13 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 4 27.03.12 11:13 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 5 27.03.12 11:13 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 6 27.03.12 11:13 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 7 27.03.12 11:14 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 8 27.03.12 11:14 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 9 27.03.12 11:14 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 10 27.03.12 11:14 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 11 27.03.12 11:14 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 12 27.03.12 11:14 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 13 27.03.12 11:14 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 14 27.03.12 11:14 Caspar David Friedrich Johannes Grave Prestel Munich · London · New York 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 15 27.03.12 11:14 I VI Caspar David Friedrich proximity and Distance A New Image? Friedrich and Classical Weimar 18 110 II VII Ways and Byways Political Paintings Artistic Beginnings in Greifswald and Copenhagen Wars of Liberation and Restoration 32 126 III VIII Picturing the Landscape Seeing in Belief Working Towards Landscape Painting Monk by the Sea and Abbey in the Oak Wood 48 142 IV IX Crisis and Resolution The Eye of the Draughtsman Sojourn in Pomerania: 1801/02 Friedrich’s Nature Studies 72 170 V X Under the Sign of the Cross Sublime Landscapes? The Religious Picture Friedrich’s Critique of Contemporary Aesthetics 88 184 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 16 27.03.12 11:14 XI Reflected Seeing appendix Friedrich’s Rear-View Figures Notes 200 262 XII Selected Literature Picturing Time 272 Friedrich’s Pictorial Cycles Biography 224 276 XIII List of Works Painting and Depth 278 The Last Years Index 248 284 Photo Credits 286 Source of Quotations 286 Acknowledgements 287 Imprint 288 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 17 27.03.12 11:14 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 18 27.03.12 11:15 Caspar David Friedrich A New Image? I 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 19 27.03.12 11:15 20 Caspar David Friedrich 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 20 27.03.12 11:15 Fig. 2 Caroline Bardua Portrait of Caspar David Friedrich 1810 Oil on canvas 76.5 × 60 cm Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin he name Caspar David Friedrich immediately calls the Dresden artist — all the more astonishing since to mind a unique, unmistakable artistic persona. Friedrich had despised all things French ever since T The very mention of his name is enough to conjure the Napoleonic occupation of Germany. However, up a distinct impression of the artist and his work. Labroue had himself been obliged to leave Metz with We feel we know precisely who is meant. And yet, the his parents, settling first in Germany and later moving images of Friedrich by his contemporaries and later to Russia, which probably meant that he was easily generations are much more varied and contradictory able to converse with Friedrich in German. than might be expected. The existence of a remark- The miniature itself leaves us in no doubt that able number of portraits demonstrates that — contrary Labroue not only met the painter in Dresden but also to tales of a misunderstood artist — he was already became acquainted with his work. The muted, diffuse famous enough during his own lifetime to be a sought background of his portrait looks very much like an after subject.1 Not long ago another portrait emerged allusion to Friedrich’s preference for misty landscapes to join the ranks of those already familiar to us. It and twilight in his paintings, and the pose adopted by came as something of a surprise, not only for its small the artist combines the requirements of portraiture size (8.6 × 7.2 cm) and its style, but also for the fact with another ‘trade mark’ of Friedrich’s work, namely that it was painted by a French artist, Alphonse de the figure seen from behind. Despite its small format, Fig. 3 Labroue (1792 – 1863) (fig. 1).2 It owes its existence Labroue’s portrait seems perfectly to anticipate the Pierre Jean David d’Angers Portrait of Caspar David Friedrich to an encounter between the two artists in Dresden admiration in David d’Angers evaluation of Friedrich’s 1834 in 1819, when the relatively unknown miniaturist aims a good ten years later: “Voilà un homme qui a Bronze medallion Musée des Beaux-Arts, Angers took the opportunity to capture the features of the découvert la tragédie du paysage!” (“Behold a man landscape painter. And he expressly noted on the who has discovered the tragedy of the landscape!”).4 back of the small ivory panel, painted in watercol- In an almost theatrical manner, Labroue has placed our and gouache, that the portrait was made “après the painter in the landscape as he himself imagined [la] nature”, that is to say, in the presence of the sub- it. Friedrich appears to have become the protagonist ject. In all likelihood, when the two men met Labroue in one of his own paintings, yet his attitude is also that will have been able to make only a detailed sketch of of the supreme master. In its integration of the painter ‹ Fig. 1 Friedrich, which he later painstakingly executed as a into a landscape typical of his own work, Labroue’s Alphonse de Labroue miniature and dated 1820. So it is now clear that long miniature has a certain affinity with an early portrait Portrait of Caspar David Friedrich 1820 5 before Pierre Jean David d’Angers (1788 – 1856) cre- of Friedrich (fig. 2) by Caroline Bardua (1781–1864). Watercolour and gouache on ivory ated a portrait medallion of Friedrich in 1834 (fig. 3),3 Labroue’s dramatisation of the portrait, in the small- 8.6 × 7.2 cm Foundation Custodia, another French artist had already made a portrait of est possible space, stands in the greatest possible Collection Lugt, Paris A New Image? 21 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 21 27.03.12 11:15 7 Fig. 4 contrast to the painting that Georg Friedrich Kersting later (fig. 4), for now the painting on the easel, being Georg Friedrich Kersting (1785 – 1847) made of his artist-friend. This painting, scrutinised by the artist, is hidden from the viewer’s Caspar David Friedrich in His Studio (II) now in Hamburg (fig. 5),6 showing Friedrich at his gaze. Kersting evokes the artist’s concentration as 1812 Oil on canvas easel — a companion piece to his painting of the stu- he engages in the creative process, and the complete 53.4 × 40.9 cm dio of Gerhard von Kügelgen (1772 – 1820) — does not exclusion here of any outside influences recalls a Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin even hint at the works that are created in this plain, much-cited remark by Friedrich: “Close your physi- austere room. As far as the foreshortened view of the cal eye, so that you see your picture first with the spir- canvas allows, it is possible to make out a thunder- itual eye. Then bring what you saw in the dark into the › Fig. 5 Georg Friedrich Kersting ing waterfall in the painting Friedrich is working on. light, so that it may have an effect on others, shining Caspar David Friedrich The power of this natural phenomenon is entirely at inwards from outside.”8 While Kersting highlights the in His Studio (I) 1811 odds with the silence and seclusion of the studio. This difference between the artist’s immediate surround- Oil on canvas impression is heightened still further in the paint- ings and the landscapes he creates, Labroue suggests 54 × 42 cm Kunsthalle, Hamburg ing Kersting made of Friedrich’s studio just one year a oneness of the art and its maker. And whereas the 22 Caspar David Friedrich 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 22 27.03.12 11:15 001_071_4627_CDF_engl.indd 23 27.03.12 11:15 studio views convey something of the rigorous preci- above all as political and social reflections. There are sion of Friedrich’s painting, the French artist’s paint- also opposing views as to whether fixed meanings ing conveys a sense of the “tragedy of the landscape”. are conveyed by his paintings, or whether his land- There is a remarkable and rich variety in the images scapes are in effect open-ended and that any attempt of Caspar David Friedrich that have come down to to attach particular meanings to them is unaccept- us: an early portrait, painted by Johan ­Ludvig Lund ably reductive.16 Might it be that in his paintings the (1777 – 1867) (fig. 6),9 reproduced as a copper engrav- Dresden artist had found a visual form for thoughts ing by Johann Benjamin Gottschick (1776 – 1844),10 that are on a par with the complex theoretical and aes- shows the young Friedrich in pensive mode, his left thetic deliberations in the air around 1800? Or did hand resting on a book, with no hint of any artistic his work constitute a naïve approach to the world that activity. Not so the much more dramatic portrait by was free of intellectualism and possibly evidence of a Gerhard von Kügelgen, where the artist’s gaze and relatively unsophisticated level of education? These pose are turned directly towards the viewer, giving him questions have been a source of endless, sometimes an unusually resolute air.11 A portrait drawing of 1823 heated, debate among art historians and — despite the by Carl Christian Vogel von Vogelstein (1788 – 1868) renewed efforts of the research community over the again shows the landscape painter without painting last ten years and more — there is as yet no end to the accoutrements and dressed in a coat that is not at all debate. like the Old German dress of Friedrich’s rear-view fig- Although the ongoing divergence of opinion regard- ures at that period.12 And whereas Johann Carl Baehr ing fundamental issues has at times led art historians (1801 – 1869) painted him, one year after his serious to indulge in questionable exaggeration, and spurious stroke, as a dignified, older man (fig.