Page 19 - Studio International - September 1972

Caspar David Friedrich

Stephen McKenna

Biography
Friedrich's first studies were in his home town,
in the University of Greifswald, but from
1794-98 he was a student at the Academy of
Copenhagen. Copenhagen was at this time a
leading centre for art in Northern Europe, and
was a citadel of classicism, on the precepts of
which the training in the Academy was based.
In 1798 he moved to Dresden where, apart
from travels to his home district, the coast of
Pomerania and the Harz mountains, he
remained until his death. He at no time showed
any inclination to make the hitherto almost
compulsory journey to Italy, or indeed to visit
any other foreign country.
During a visit to Greifswald in 18o1,
Friedrich was introduced to the younger painter
Phillip Otto Runge, who was to be an important
connection during the next three years in
Dresden. Dresden was then the liveliest and
most important cultural centre in Germany, and
Runge and Friedrich moved into the circle of
the founders of the new movement in literature—
Tieck, Jean-Paul, Novalis, Schelling and
Schlegel. Wiesen bei Greifswald 181o. Oil on canvas. Kunsthalle, Hamburg
The first oil paintings of Friedrich date from
firs, and in this time I met no single living remember only a single evening when we
1807. Previously he had worked only in pen and
person; it is true, I do not recommend this succeeded in keeping him in a small family
ink wash. In 1810 he exhibited in the Berlin
method to everyone—it was already too much circle by us. The twilight was his element. A
Academy, was made a member, and attracted
for me; gloominess comes involuntarily into solitary walk in the first early morning light, and
the critical attention of Brentano, Arnim and
the soul. But exactly that must prove to you, a second in the evening at or after sunset, in
Kleist. From this period until the late twenties
that my company can never be pleasant to which he enjoyed the company of a friend; that
Friedrich was a well known and respected, if
anyone.' (1821) was his only diversion, otherwise he brooded
sometimes misunderstood, painter. He was almost continuously over his creative art, in his
elected a teaching member of the Dresden 2. 'Two halves make a whole, but he who is half strongly shadowed room.'
Academy in 1816, and a professor in 1824. In a musician and half a painter is always only a
1820 he made the acquaintance of Carus, who whole half. Thus there may also be whole 2. 'It was of the greatest importance to me to
was to become the most articulate theoretician quarters, and our schools seem to make even learn Friedrich's procedure in the development
of the new ideas in landscape painting, and the smaller fractions their aim.' of his paintings. He made no sketches, cartoons
preserver of Friedrich's own words and or colour designs for his paintings, since he
3. 'A picture should not be invented, but felt.'
writings. In the same year Friedrich moved to asserted (and certainly not entirely without
share a house with the painter Dahl, where he 4. 'The painter should not simply paint what he justice) that fantasy was somewhat cooled
remained until his death. sees before him, but also what he sees in through these aids. He did not start a painting
After 1830, the change of fashionable himself. Should he, however, see nothing in until it stood living before his soul, then he drew
interest to the Düsseldorf school caused himself, let him abstain from painting what he on the pure, stretched canvas, first freely with
Friedrich's work to be neglected. Financial sees before him. Otherwise his pictures will chalk and pencil, then the whole neatly and
hardship and sickness followed, and in 1835 an resemble those Spanish screens, behind which completely with reed pen and ink, and then
apoplectic fit left him virtually incapacitated. one expects only the sick or the completely continued quickly to the underpainting. His
dead.' paintings looked exact and orderly at every
Some quotations from Friedrich stage of their development, and always gave the
These are preserved in letters and collected by Some quotations from Carus impression of his individuality, and the mood in
Carl Gustav Carus in Friedrich der 1. About Friedrich: 'In Dresden he had always which they had first made their inner
Landschaftsmaler Dresden 1841. kept himself apart, making no connection with appearances to him.'
1. 'You want to have me with you, but that "I", the resident Professors, and so gradually trained
that appeals to you, will not be with you. I must himself in his own deeply poetic, if somewhat 3. 'Whoever cares to go back five or six decades
remain alone, and know that I am alone, to be obscure and abrupt style of landscape. As in his in the history of landscape painting, and
able to observe and feel nature completely; I art, so was he in his life: upright, straight and particularly in Germany, will hit upon a fairly
must give myself up to what surrounds me, solitary—German through and through—he had desolate condition of a branch of art which
unite myself with my clouds and fields, in order never even tried to learn any of the modern should belong in many respects, particularly
to be what I am. I need loneliness for the foreign languages; he was a stranger to every now, to the new age. After the memories of
dialogue with Nature. Once I lived for a whole ostentation, as to every luxurious sociability. Ruysdael, Everdingen and Waterloo on the one
week in Utterwalder Grund, between rocks and One hardly saw him among people, and I side, and of Claude Lorrain, the Poussins,
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