The Great Enclosure (painting)

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The Great Enclosure (Caspar David Friedrich)
The big enclosure
Caspar David Friedrich , around 1832
Oil on canvas
73.5 × 102.5 cm
New Masters Gallery in the Albertinum
State Art Collections Dresden

The large enclosure , also known as the Ostra enclosure, is a painting by Caspar David Friedrich from around 1832 . The painting in oil on canvas in the format 73.5 cm × 102.5 cm is located in the Albertinum in Dresden and belongs to the New Masters Gallery of the State Art Collections . In recent times it is considered the "coronation of Friedrich's late work" .

Image description

The painting shows a river at low tide or a flooded area with sand and mud islands. Towards the horizon, groups of trees and meadows alternate. A ridge rises to the right of the picture. A gray bank of clouds hovers over the horizon, fraying upwards in the yellow reflection of the evening sun. The sky, which takes up three fifths of the area, disappears at the zenith in a pure light gray. The coloring of the vegetation in cool, graduated olive and brown tones indicates autumn. A barge sails through the picture from the right, suggesting life in the deserted landscape. The picture seems to fixate for a fleeting moment.

Image and topography

Ostragehege Dresden 1863
Dresden, Großes Ostragehege, Hauptallee

The landscape of the picture evidently shows the area of ​​the Great Ostra enclosure in Dresden . The area is located northwest of the city limits on the south bank of the Elbe and west of the Weißeritz river . The interrupted bodies of water should represent the Elbe. The row of trees on the left could mean one of the three avenues that ran from the bank of the Weißeritz to the west at the beginning of the 19th century. The area was characterized by a partially wooded wet meadow landscape. At this point the Weißeritz poured into the Elbe and created a large alluvial fan . In the real landscape there is no point of view for the painter's perspective. In order to be able to record such a sector in perspective, one would have to hover a few meters above the ground. The landscape of the Ostra enclosure evidently only serves the painter as an approximate motif. Mayumi Ohara thinks the title Large Enclosure is only partially applicable. Friedrich was familiar with the area. He had lived in house at An der Elbe 33 since 1820 and was able to reach the alleged Malort on foot within half an hour. The only reliable sketch material that the painter used for the painting shows rows of trees from Breesen in Mecklenburg from 1804.

Image interpretation

In art history, the interpretation of the image is carried out under religious, structural-aesthetic and form-experimental aspects. Helmut Börsch-Supan recognizes a clear message in the painting, which he ascribes to almost all of the painter's pictures, namely the thoughts “about finite life as a preliminary stage to eternal”. The oppressive beauty in heaven and its reflections on earth referred to the "last things". Hilmar Frank, on the other hand, speaks of “almost abstract expressive characters of form and color” that meet here. In 1924, Willi Wolfradt was the first art historian to discover geometric patterns behind clouds and landscapes. For Börsch-Supan, “the attempts to track down the beauty of the image by means of geometric laws are idle.” Jens Christian Jensen does not want to accept the contrast between religion and geometry. “Sensual magic and belief have become one. Who can divide them up? "

Structure and geometry

In the art-theoretical analysis of the picture, the paradoxical contrast is discussed that arises between the “impression of total order” and the fascinating effect that emerges from the interplay of cool colors and the simple picture objects of the landscape.

"Seen in isolation, the pale watercourses and pools are as strange and unfamiliar as the topography of a distant planet."

- Werner Hofmann

Friedrich works here against the perspective of the habit of seeing, he apparently leaves the “Euclidean space and invents a pneumatic space that comes towards us and at the same time shrinks back”. The shape of the river bed creates the impression of a sphere arching towards the sky. Decisive for this phenomenon are the hyperbolas inscribed in the picture and tied together on the horizon line , which soar up in the cloud fringe and in the watercourse. This geometric charge of the picture composition can be clearly seen in comparison to the sketch of the large enclosure that was drawn up beforehand .

The structural principle of the golden section can also be seen . The horizon line forms the horizontal of the measurement system. The left vertical runs at the end of the large strip of trees in the middle distance on the left. The right vertical touches the sail of the boat.

Construction picture

Hirschfeld's theory of garden art

Friedrich's visual aesthetic is strongly influenced by the English landscape garden . It is also the views and rules of garden art that have been transferred to landscape painting and that can be seen as a stimulus for image structure and composition for some of the landscapes. Willi Geismeier , Hilmar Frank and Helmut Börsch-Supan referred to the landscape garden as a prerequisite for Friedrich's work in the history of ideas and named the theory of garden art by Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld as the source . Above all, it is the ideas of the Kiel professor of philosophy and the fine arts about composing moods by bringing together the various landscape elements that the painter used for his work. According to Willi Geismeier, Detlef Stapf assumes that Friedrich converted text episodes from Hirschfeld's compendium into images and has presented an image-systematic evaluation. According to this, the large enclosure can be seen as the most important construction image based on a text inspiration from Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld's theory of garden art . A possible reference text is a consideration in the chapter From the individual parts of a region to the difficulties that horticulturists and landscape painters face when designing a plane.

“But a plane that is supposed to fall must partly have a certain extent on all sides, and partly must not represent an empty, inanimate surface. A long, narrow line has nothing engaging in itself. If the expanse of the plane loses itself too far without an interruption that the eye can no longer grasp the boundary, the sight will soon become tiring. The eye must find her occupation and entertainment; if it is empty or completely monochrome, it will arouse weariness and boredom.
The plain receives even more life through water, which now flashes with sunshine, now the face of the blue sky and the alternating paintings of the clouds reflect back.
Since the level is not very interesting in itself, it can still gain a lot of impression from the boundary and neighborhood. It becomes more pleasant when it gets lost between groups of trees in a grove or swells up into a bushy hill than when it disappears into the empty distance; it is even more pleasant when a mountain piles up at your side, or a high forest […], or some other important object marks its border with a lovely twilight. "

- Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld

After this text, the structure of the picture with the mentioned picture elements can be understood, which is developed from a “narrow line” in the foreground and background. For Hirschfeld, the sailing boat is an object that can interrupt the “monotonous silence” and “proclaim some kind of life”.

Sketches and studies

The nature study Landschaft an der Weißeritz of May 24, 1808 can be vaguely related to the painting. The drawing Baumstudien of May 20, 1804 reveals that Friedrich uses completely different landscapes for the Dresden motif. This sheet, of which two Sketches for the two rows of trees in the middle distance of the oil painting were made in Breesen in Mecklenburg and shows u. a. the parsonage there, in which Friedrich's sister Catharina Dorothea Sponholz lived. A small oil painting with the title Sketch of the Large Enclosure , created around 1830, probably served as a preliminary study for the large picture.

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Landscape on the Weißeritz , 1808

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Tree Studies , 1804

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Sketch for the large enclosure , around 1830

Provenance

The painting was acquired by the Saxon Art Association in 1832 . In a raffle by the association in December 1832, the picture was won by the Saxon Conference Minister Gottlob Adolf Ernst von Nostitz and Jänkendorf . The picture gallery of the Staatliche Kunstsammlung Dresden bought Das Große Gehege in 1909 from Ella von Nostitz and Jänckendorf.

Classification in the overall work

The painting The Great Enclosure , described as the crowning glory of his late work, occupies a special position in terms of composition and aesthetics. It shows the extraordinary creative will of the painter, plagued by diseases, at the age of around 58.

"In it all soul forces are revealed in a concentric form, which brought about the unique life's work of this painter, and so, in retrospect, the picture is the key to the whole"

- Helmut Börsch-Supan

A similar density of communication can also be found in the painting Levels of Life from 1835.

modernity

Edvard Munch: Landscape by the Sea , 1921

Friedrich anticipates facets of landscapes of the classical modern with the two-dimensional image details brought together to form an overall atmospheric effect . Works by Edvard Munch or Erich Heckel, for example, can be used for comparison . The Great Enclosure is a suitable example of the fact that, according to Theodor W. Adorno, “aesthetic modernity” begins with painters like Caspar David Friedrich.

reception

Johann Philipp Veith: Evening on the Elbe , 1832
Postage stamp (GDR) 1974

The Dresden landscape draftsman, etcher and copperplate engraver Johann Philipp Veith made a reproduction of the painting in 1833 for the picture chronicle of the Saxon Art Association with the title Evening on the Elbe . Several details have been changed from the Friedrich picture. Veith corrected the perspective of the foreground to a flatter angle and thus changed the painter's design intent in an essential point.

The Great Enclosure was shown at the great Caspar David Friedrich exhibition in London in 1972 and was admired with amazement by the public who were skeptical of German romanticism.

On May 21, 1974, on the occasion of Caspar David Friedrich's 200th birthday, the GDR Deutsche Post issued a stamp with the motif of the large enclosure .

In 2013, The Great Enclosure was the focus of the Dresden special exhibition The Shaking of the Senses . For the first time, the masterpieces of Caspar David Friedrich were presented together with those of his European artist colleagues of the early 19th century, those of the British John Constable , those of the French Eugène Delacroix and those of the Spaniard Francisco de Goya . The pictures from the Romantic era were juxtaposed with works of contemporary art, around u. a. to show how Caspar David Friedrich influenced Mark Rothko and Gerhard Richter .

Web links

Commons : Das Große Gehege bei Dresden  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

literature

  • Helmut Börsch-Supan: Caspar David Friedrich: Feeling as Law . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3422068070 .
  • 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)
  • Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Publishing house CH Beck, Munich 2003
  • Hilmar Frank: Prospects for the immeasurable. Perspectivity and open-mindedness with Caspar David Friedrich . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2004
  • Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work . 2 vol., Munich 2011
  • Werner Hofmann: Caspar David Friedrich. Natural reality and art truth. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46475-0
  • Jens Christian Jensen: Caspar David Friedrich. Life and work . DuMont Verlag, Cologne 1999
  • Mayumi Ohara: About the so-called "large enclosure" Caspar David Friedrichs . In: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 47, 1984, pp. 100–117
  • Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrich's hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts . Greifswald 2014, network-based P-Book
  • Herrmann Zschoche: Caspar David Friedrich. The letters . ConferencePoint Verlag, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-936406-12-X

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 188, note on this: Helmut Börsch-Supan also cites Werner Busch in Caspar David Friedrich Law and Feeling (2008) on p. 11 here
  2. ↑ Mayumi Ohara: About the so-called "large enclosure" Caspar David Friedrichs . In: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 47, 1984, pp. 100–117
  3. ^ Herrmann Zschoche: Caspar David Friedrich. The letters . ConferencePoint Verlag, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-936406-12-X , p. 34
  4. ^ 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), p. 16
  5. ↑ Hilmar Frank: Prospects into the immeasurable. Perspectivity and open-mindedness with Caspar David Friedrich . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2004 p. 168
  6. ^ Willi Wolfradt: Caspar David Friedrich and the landscape of romanticism . Mauritius Verlag, Berlin 1924
  7. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan: Caspar David Friedrich. Feeling as law . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 2008, p. 15
  8. ^ Jens Christian Jensen: Caspar David Friedrich. Life and work . DuMont Verlag, Cologne 1999, p. 49
  9. ^ Jens Christian Jensen: Caspar David Friedrich. Life and work . DuMont Verlag, Cologne 1999, p. 48
  10. ^ Werner Hofmann: Caspar David Friedrich. Natural reality and art truth. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-406-46475-0 , p. 199
  11. ^ Werner Hofmann: Caspar David Friedrich. Natural reality and art truth. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-406-46475-0 , p. 236
  12. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan: Caspar David Friedrich. Feeling as law . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 2008, p. 13
  13. ^ Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 188
  14. ↑ Willi Geismeier: On the importance and developmental position of a feeling for nature and landscape representation in Caspar David Friedrich . Dissertation, Berlin 1966, p. 106 ff.
  15. ↑ Hilmar Frank: Prospects into the immeasurable. Perspectivity and open-mindedness with Caspar David Friedrich . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2004, p. 162
  16. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan: Caspar David Friedrich. Feeling as law . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 2008, p. 146
  17. ^ Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld: Theory of garden art . Five volumes, MG Weidmanns Erben und Reich, Leipzig 1797 to 1785
  18. ↑ Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrichs hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts . Greifswald 2014, p. 250, network-based P-Book
  19. ^ Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld: Theory of garden art . Christian Cay Lorenz, MG Weidmanns Erben and Reich, Leipzig 1797 to 1785, Volume 1, p. 189 f.
  20. ↑ Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work . 2 vol., Munich 2011, p. 534
  21. ↑ Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work . 2 vol., Munich 2011, p. 391
  22. ↑ Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrichs hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts . Greifswald 2014, p. 22, network-based P-Book
  23. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan: Caspar David Friedrich. Feeling as law . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 2008, p. 20
  24. ^ 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), p. 431
  25. ↑ Files of the Saxon Art Association, Vol. II, fol. 293 b, vol. III, fol. 14, 104 b
  26. ^ Werner Hofmann: Helmut Börsch-Supan: Caspar David Friedrich. Feeling as law. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 2008, p. 11, 1 paragraph
  27. ^ 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), p. 431
  28. ^ William Vaughan, Helmut Börsch-Supan, Hans-Joachim Neidhardt: Caspar David Friedrich 1774-1840. Romantic Landscape Painting in Dresden (exhibition catalog), London 1972, No. 100