Caroline Friedrich
Caroline Friedrich (born Christiane Caroline Bommer ; born July 14, 1793 in Dresden ; † January 3, 1847 ibid) was the wife of the painter Caspar David Friedrich .
Life
Caroline Bommer was the daughter of Christopher Bommer, a factor of dyers in Dresden. The Bommer family had known Caspar David Friedrich since 1804 at the latest. Caroline's father died in 1807.
marriage
Caspar David Friedrich and Caroline Bommer got engaged in 1816. When he was appointed to the Dresden Academy in December 1816, the painter received a salary of 150 thalers and was thus able to afford a family. He was 42 years old at the time.
The wedding took place on January 21, 1818 in the Dresden Kreuzkirche , without Friedrich's relatives. The husband did not write to his relatives until a week after the marriage, after his wife had urged him to do so. In the letter, he also revealed his beliefs about the new state of marriage:
“… My wife is already starting to get restless and has repeatedly reminded me of painting and writing; because she too wants to write to get to know her new brothers better. It's a purring thing when you have a wife, purring when you have an economy, no matter how small; It's purring when my wife invites me to come to table for lunch. And finally it is purring when I stay at home in the evening and not walk around in the open as usual. I also find it purring that everything I do now always happens and has to be done with consideration for my wife. "
In the summer of 1818 the couple went on their honeymoon to Neubrandenburg , Greifswald and Rügen . It was the only major trip Caroline took. In 1819 the daughter Emma Johanna was born, in 1823 the daughter Agnes Adelheit, in 1824 the son Gustav Adolf .
Caroline played the role of the caring wife. Carl Gustav Carus saw in the young Caroline the type of woman of a "lovely, nice, domestic girl". It changed Friedrich's "nature and his life in nothing". She kept in correspondence with Friedrich's relatives in northern Germany and also cultivated friendships that Friedrich occasionally neglected, such as with the family of the painter Georg Friedrich Kersting in Meissen . Friedrich encouraged his wife to paint too. This resulted in a series of flower pictures.
Caroline Friedrich showed a great deal of understanding for her husband's work. The quote sent by Wilhelmine von Chézy is well known : "The day he paints air, you are not allowed to talk to him [...]". She accepted the painter's need for solitude and then to be there for him when he needed her. She had to endure Friedrich's lifelong recurring phases of depression, his paranoia at an advanced age, and violence against his wife and children.
“In his peculiar, always dark and often hard disposition, apparently as a forerunner of a brain ailment to which he later suffered, certain fixed ideas had developed which began to completely undermine his domestic existence. Suspicious as he was, he tormented himself and his family with ideas of his wife's unfaithfulness that were completely out of the air, but nevertheless sufficed to completely absorb him. Attacks of raw severity against his own did not fail to appear. "
Poverty in old age
Due to the illness of the last years of his life, Friedrich had only little income to record with declining art production. Only Wassili Andrejewitsch Schukowski made noteworthy purchases of his pictures . After Friedrich's death, Caroline was left without any income and was dependent on alms. Her son-in-law Robert Krüger wrote to the Russian poet and translator in a letter dated December 24, 1841 about a financial donation from the Russian tsar, which was also granted in February 1843 with 150 thalers.
"Since the widow of the deceased is now without any means of her own, who is also responsible for the upbringing of a younger daughter and a son (the latter devoting himself to art), these bereaved relatives of the immortalized would acknowledge in deep awe if Sr. Majesty graciously recognized the emperor would deign to let the great grace expressed against my father-in-law pass over to his widow most graciously. "
progeny
The marriage had three children: Emma Johanna (1819–1845), Agnes Adelheit (1823–1898) and Gustav Adolf (1824–1889).
Gustav Adolf became an animal painter and passed on his artistic talent to his son Harald (1858–1933), who was professor of painting at the Technical University in Hanover (last male descendant of Caspar David Friedrich in direct line).
Figure in Caspar David Friedrich's paintings
Caspar David Friedrich did not leave a portrait of his wife. The painter preferably placed Caroline as a model in the domestic surroundings of the Dresden apartment, as a figure on the back or in the blurring of a candle light. This is how the paintings woman on the stairs , woman at the window , woman with the chandelier and the evening star with Caroline and the children in front of the Dresden city skyline were created.
Caspar David Friedrich: Woman at the Window , 1822
Caspar David Friedrich: Woman with the Candlestick , 1825
Caspar David Friedrich: The Evening Star , around 1830/35
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These honest subjects differ significantly from the passionate depictions of women that were created up to 1818, such as the garden terrace or the woman in front of the setting sun .
Caspar David Friedrich: Garden Terrace , 1811
Caspar David Friedrich: Woman before the Setting Sun , around 1818
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literature
- Helmut Börsch-Supan, Karl Wilhelm Jähnig: Caspar David Friedrich. Paintings, prints and pictorial drawings . Prestel Verlag, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-7913-0053-9 (catalog raisonné)
- Carl Gustav Carus: Memoirs and Memories. Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, 2 volumes, Weimar 1965/66
- Kurt Wilhelm-Kästner among others: Caspar David Friedrich and his home . Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 1940
- Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrich's hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts . Greifswald 2014, p. 40 ff. Network-based P-Book
- Hermann Zschoche: Caspar David Friedrich. The letters . ConferencePoint Verlag, Hamburg 2006
Individual evidence
- ^ Karl Ludwig Hoch: Caspar David Friedrich - unknown documents of his life . Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1985, p. 70
- ^ Hermann Zschoche: Caspar David Friedrich . The letters. ConferencePoint Verlag, Hamburg 2006, p. 118
- ^ Hermann Zschoche: Caspar David Friedrich. The letters . ConferencePoint Verlag, Hamburg 2006, p. 117
- ^ Carl Gustav Carus: Memoirs and Memories . Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, Volume 1, Weimar 1965/66, p. 168 f.
- ↑ Klaus Lankheit: The early romanticism and the basics of "non-representational painting" . In: New Heidelberg Yearbooks 1951, p. 74
- ^ Carl Gustav Carus: Memoirs and Memories . Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, Volume 1, Weimar 1965/66, p. 498
- ↑ Sigrid Hinz (Ed.): Caspar David Friedrich in letters and confessions . Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1974, p. 74
- ↑ Kurt Wilhelm-Kästner among others: Caspar David Friedrich and his home . Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 1940, p. 32
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Friedrich, Caroline |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Bommer, Christiane Caroline (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Wife of the painter Caspar David Friedrich |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 14, 1793 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dresden |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 3, 1847 |
| Place of death | Dresden |