Caspar David Friedrich September 5, 1774 – May 7, 1840
Caspar David Friedrich was a Romantic painter born in Greifswald on the Baltic coast.
As a small boy, Friedrich was involved in a terrible tragedy, which left a burden on him for the rest of his life, leaving him in a state of deep and permanent melancholy. Whilst ice skating on a lake, he fell through the thin ice. His older brother managed to save him from the freezing waters, but was drowned in the attempt. The knowledge of his brother’s sacrifice weighed heavy on Friedrich, making him a very serious person. However, his serious manner allowed him to see things, especially nature, with a more sensitive eye than most people of the time. This sensitivity to the atmospheric and changeable quality of nature is vivid in his work and is the very reason he was inspired to paint in the first place.
Friedrich received his first art lessons in Greifswald, from architect J.G Quistorp, who quickly recognised the youth’s exceptional skills, and helped him obtain a scholarship for the Copenhagen Academy. Friedrich studied at the Academy from 1794 – 1798. The Academy was very liberal and generous towards its students and, although it involved an intensive programme of learning, it also allowed students a lot of freedom to explore their own artistic independence. There is no doubt that Friedrich’s masterly techniques in drawing and painting are a result of this solid education. However, the content of his paintings suggest a detachment from, and rebellion against his tutors.
In 1798, Friedrich moved to Dresden, where he settled permanently, save for a few study trips to Rugen, the Harz Mountains, Bohemia, The Bavarian Alps and Greifswald. Despite the fashion at this time to visit southern countries like Italy, Friedrich felt it went against his patriotism to seek the enrichment of his artistic creativeness outside of his homelands. He was keen to present the nature that surrounded him as he saw it, and not mixed in with foreign imagery or influence. In Dresden Friedrich quickly became the centre of the impressive and aspiring Romantic movement.
His first important painting was an altarpiece for Count Thun’s Chapel in Tetschen. The piece, entitled The Cross in the Mountains, caused a huge controversy in the art world at the time. It was unheard of to see a landscape as the main picture above the altar, rather than a biblical scene or religious legend. The natural scene, however, felt deeply religious, and urged the viewer to look for God’s omnipresence in nature, as Friedrich himself had done.
“Jesus Christ, nailed to the wood, is turned towards the sinking sun as the picture of the eternal all stimulating Father. With Jesus died the teachings of an old world, the time when God the Father walked on earth. This sun sank, and the earth was no longer able to hold the disappearing light. The Saviour on the cross radiates light as from the purest precious metal, in the gold of the evening sun, and reflects on to earth with a subdued lustre. The cross stands on a rock, unmovable as our belief in Jesus Christ. Evergreen, everlasting through all time, the fir trees stand around the cross, as the hopes of mankind in him, the crucified.”
However, art critics at the time were unable to understand such a representation and true artistic controversy began.
His drawings were generally very well accepted, but Friedrich’s paintings were unable to convince most people. Public criticism was based on established academic rules and standards set by Italian art at the time. Even Goethe, who Friedrich met in 1810, could not see any exceptional quality in his paintings, although he highly valued his drawings.
“A number of landscape drawings from Friedrich gave us the most pleasant reflection and entertainment in autumn. We recognised and valued his great talent, the thoughts behind his work are gentle, even pious, but they cannot be generally accepted in a strict artistic sense.”
Despite Goethe’s criticism, he helped Friedrich achieve the Weimar Friends of Art Award. Thanks to this, Friedrich was guaranteed recognition in the highest circles, with his art being held in high regard by the likes of Frederick William III, King of Prussia. In 1810, Friedrich was honoured with a membership in the Royal Prussian Academy of Art in Berlin. In 1816 he became a member of the Dresden Academy, securing himself modest earnings, and putting him in a financial position to be able to marry in 1818.
From 1822 Friedrich, frustrated by a string of ‘bad experiences’, began to withdraw from the official art world. His painting became more and more criticised and rejected and he began to suffer from depression, strokes and paralysis, which left him almost completely incapable of working. Massive financial struggles, lessened slightly by friends, only added to his stress and drained his strength. He died in 1840, before he was able to receive his small pension. This money did, however, secure a livelihood for his family who would otherwise have been left destitute.
Caspar David Friedrich’s art varied very little throughout his life, consistently conveying scenes of natural mysticism and religious undertones. The way he built his landscapes and his inclusion of people always followed the same rules. There is no visible development at all from painting to painting, resulting in incredible perfection and harmony in the works.
What is, perhaps, most interesting about Friedrich’s paintings, is his use of people within his landscapes. This technique is called staffage: human and animal figures depicted in a scene, but not as a primary subject matter. They are typically small and help indicate scale and depth whilst adding an element of interest. Known as Ruckenfigur (Figure from the Back), all of Friedrich’s figures stand facing away from the viewer, looking into the scene and drawing the observer’s eye directly towards what is happening within the picture. The person standing in front of it thus becomes a part of the scene, feeling a sense of empathy with the characters.
Throughout his work, Friedrich kept his motifs simple, taking careful notice of certain natural conditions, such as ground formation, plant types, seasons, and types of light. No small detail was ever dealt with in a superficial way, with the tiniest items represented with the meticulousness of nature itself. Into these landscapes he then brought his subjective feelings, his romantic philosophies and his ideas of God being behind everything.
“You should see with your own eye and present objects faithfully as they appear to you; you must represent the effect things have on you in your pictures! Many were given little, a few received a lot: The spirit of nature reveals itself to everyone in a different way, because of this no one can impose his rules and regulations as an infallible law. No one is the gauge for everyone, everyone is just a gauge for themselves and for the disposition more or less connected to them.”
“…You teachers of art who imagine yourselves to be so clever with your knowledge and abilities, beware that you do not tyrannically impose your teachings and rules; if you do, you could easily break the fragile flowers, destroy the temple of characteristics without which man cannot achieve greatness. You are not able to build up anything better, no matter what you think, man’s characteristics show themselves in their own way, everyone differently according to his inner nature. Your teachings may be good, but they are not suitable for everyone, then, every flower does not grow on the same ground.”
A resurgence in interest in Friedrich’s work began in the 1900s, with a 1906 Berlin exhibition featuring 32 of his paintings. By the 1920s his work had been discovered by the Expressionists and, in the 1930s and 1940s, by the Surrealists and Existentialists who frequently drew ideas and inspiration from his work. The rise of the Nazi party in the early 1930s again saw a rise in appreciation of Friedrich’s work, which was quickly followed by a rapid decline as his work was, by association with Nazism, seen as having a nationalistic aspect. It was not until the late 1970s that Friedrich regained his reputation as an icon of German Romanticism and a painter of great international importance.