Sea of Mists: Caspar David Friedrich to 1820

Nothing about Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), the central artist in this group of German Romantic painters, is ever straightforward: he was born in Greifswald, near the Baltic coast of modern Germany. At the time though, that was part of Swedish Pomerania, as it had been since 1630, and Friedrich considered himself to be part Swedish as a result, even though he opted for German nationality and lived for most of his adult life in the city of Dresden.

Like most of that day, his childhood was marred by tragedies. His mother died when he was only seven, one brother died when he was thirteen, a sister the following year, and another sister when he was seventeen. After showing his drawing ability in classes at his local university, he studied at the prestigious Copenhagen Academy between 1794-98, then returned to his home town. In the autumn of 1798 he moved to Dresden, where he soon started travelling to draw and sketch on the Baltic Coast, on Rügen, in the Harz Mountains, and Bohemia. He met Philipp Otto Runge, and started exhibiting with the Dresden Academy.

During these early years, he concentrated on sepia drawings and experimented with woodcut prints. In 1805 he won a prize that attracted the attention of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who was already a key figure in the wider Romantic movement. After that, he started to concentrate on landscape paintings in oils.

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), Summer (Landscape with a Pair of Lovers) (1807), oil on canvas, 71.4 x 103.6 cm, Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

He painted Summer (Landscape with a Pair of Lovers) in 1807. To the right of the couple are large flowers.

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), The Tetschen Altar (The Cross in the Mountains) (1807-08), oil on canvas, 115 × 110.5 cm, Galerie Neue Meister, Dresden, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

Friedrich exhibited The Cross in the Mountains, now more popularly known as The Tetschen Altar, in his studio in 1808, apparently a commission for a family chapel in Bohemia. Although it was reported as having significant impact on those who saw it, critics were unimpressed with his use of a religious motif within what was essentially a landscape painting. For the only time in his career, Friedrich responded to the critics by explaining his intentions, comparing the rays of evening sunlight to the light of God the Father.

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), Morning Mist in the Mountains (1808), oil on canvas, 71 x 104 cm, Thüringer Landesmuseum Heidecksburg, Rudolstadt, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

One of his earliest paintings in which fog was a feature is his Morning Mist in the Mountains from 1808. This shows the Honigstein massif near Rathen, on the River Elbe, and has a distinctly Chinese look.

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), The Abbey in the Oak Wood (1808–10), oil on canvas, 110.4 × 171 cm, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Wikimedia Commons.

Another of his early successes, The Abbey in the Oak Wood from 1808–10, offers a dark vision of death, gloom, and the depths of Gothic horror. This shows the ruins of a church amid gnarled and barren trees, silhouetted against a twilight sky. Hanging low in the sky is a thin sliver of the new moon. In the gathering murk, we can just distinguish the dark shadows of graveyard memorials, and a funeral procession bearing a coffin into the remains of the church entrance. Even the horizon is lost in the cloak of darkness covering the land. This was exhibited at the Berlin Academy in 1810, and earned him election to that academy the following year.

Also in 1810, Friedrich completed a walking tour in the Riesengebirge Mountains, as well as meeting Goethe.

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), Winter Landscape (c 1811), oil on canvas, 32.5 x 45 cm, The National Gallery (bought, 1987), London. Courtesy of and © The National Gallery, London.

Friedrich’s Winter Landscape from about 1811 is notable as one of the last oil paintings attested to use the blue pigment smalt. Perhaps Friedrich found it more suitable for its subtle colour transitions. It is one of several of his paintings continuing the theme he established in The Cross in the Mountains, here combining a crucifix with a cathedral, in the snow of a German winter. Leaning against a rock in front of the crucifix is a lone figure, who appears to have cast away his crutches in a miraculous healing.

In 1812, King Frederick William III bought Friedrich’s painting Morning in the Riesengebirge. In 1815, Friedrich was elected to the Dresden Academy. Two years later, he met the polymath Carl Gustav Carus, and the Norwegian landscape artist Johan Christian Clausen Dahl, both of whom become his pupils and lifelong friends.

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), Morning (Boats Depart) (c 1816–1818), oil on canvas, 22 × 30.2 cm, Lower Saxony State Museum , Hanover, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

Earlier in his career, Friedrich had painted several motifs including sailing vessels which are not dissimilar to those shown here. In his Morning (Boats Depart) (c 1816–1818), a series of small boats are seen leaving the coast. Although shadows aren’t shown, this view appears to look north-east, and the vessels are for leisure rather than fishing.

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), Greifswald in Moonlight (1817), oil on canvas, 22.5 × 30.5 cm, Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo, Norway. Wikimedia Commons.

Friedrich’s earlier coastal nocturnes include meticulously detailed views such as this of Greifswald in Moonlight (1817), showing his home town, which by this time had passed via Denmark to Prussia.

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), Wanderer above the Sea of Mists (1818), oil on canvas, 94.8 × 74.8 cm, Kunsthalle Hamburg. Wikimedia Commons.

Friedrich’s famous Wanderer above the Sea of Mists (1818) uses extensive mist and cloud both to detach its scenery from ground level, and to maintain its pervasive air of mystery. A bareheaded, blond man stands astride a rocky outcrop in the foreground, a walking stick in his right hand, looking in the same direction as the viewer. He and we look out over a blanket of lower cloud, pierced by occasional rock pinnacles and peaks. In the distance, more gradual slopes suggest higher mountains to the sides, and vaguer forms of rounded peaks, and a massive rocky butte, fading into mist. Because we can’t see anything of his face, the figure remains anonymous and as mysterious as the view.

This is perhaps Friedrich’s first use of a figure with its back to the viewer, a device known in German as Rückenfigur, which became a common feature of German Romantic paintings.

On 21 January 1818, Friedrich married Caroline Bommer. The couple honeymooned in Greifswald, Stralsund, and on the island of Rügen, on the Baltic coast and famous for its chalk cliffs.

Caspar David Friedrich, Chalk Cliffs on Rügen (after 1818), oil on canvas, 90.5 × 71 cm, Museum Oskar Reinhart am Stadtgarten, Winterthur, Switzerland. Wikimedia Commons.

Marriage brought a transformation to Friedrich’s paintings, as shown in this famous view of Chalk Cliffs on Rügen, painted at some time following his honeymoon visit.

Here are dazzling white pinnacles of chalk, a calm sea with sailing vessels, shown in full daylight, the whole framed by trees in full leaf to enhance depth. But each of its three figures is looking away into the view as Rückenfiguren. They might represent his bride clad in red symbolising love, and himself, both engaged in studying the clifftop from its edge, but there’s a third person: a man wearing a tricorn hat (which becomes a recurrent theme in his work), arms folded, staring out to sea as if the couple weren’t there at all. It has been suggested that this third figure is Friedrich the artist.

Not only did he add the three puzzling figures, but he exaggerated the chalk pinnacles, and made the distant sails look like thin shards of chalk, to add to its vertiginous effect. Then, as if to confuse, seven or eight years later, when Friedrich visited Rügen again, he painted in watercolour what might appear to have been a study for that oil painting, shown below. The three figures are gone.

Caspar David Friedrich, Chalk Cliffs on Rügen (c 1825-6), watercolour and pencil on paper, 31.7 x 25.2 cm, Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig. Wikimedia Commons.

In 1819, Friedrich was visited by Prince Christian Frederick of Denmark, and the following year by Grand Duke Nikolay Pavlovich, who later became Emperor Nicholas I of Russia and Friedrich’s patron.

References

Wikipedia on Friedrich.

Hofmann W (2000) Caspar David Friedrich, Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978 0 500 09295 8.
Piotrovsky MB et al. (2008) Caspar David Friedrich & the German Romantic Landscape, Lund Humphries. ISBN 978 1 84822 017 1.