The monk by the sea

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The monk by the sea (Caspar David Friedrich)
The monk by the sea
Caspar David Friedrich , 1808–1810
(condition before restoration)
Oil on canvas
110 x 171.5 cm
Old National Gallery

The Monk by the Sea is a painting by Caspar David Friedrich , created between 1808 and 1810 . The painting in oil on canvas in the format 110 × 171.5 cm is also known under the title Wanderer am Gestade des Meeres . With the radical image of a landscape, it is considered the “epitome of a modern image” and “altarpiece of modern man”.

The painting is in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin and can be seen there as a pair with the Abbey in the Eichwald . The pair of images was shown for the first time at the Berlin academy exhibition in 1810 and by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. acquired. The reputation of the purchase and a euphoric review by Heinrich von Kleist brought the painter his breakthrough to fame. However, a number of contemporary observers reacted disapprovingly to the picture, which radically broke with the tradition of landscape painting. Since 2016 the work has been presented again after extensive restoration work.

Image description

motive

The painting shows a bare, whitish dune bank that rises to the left at an obtuse angle into the black water of a sea, which is moved by the wind. The hills of the shore seem to continue in the crests of the waves. The dark tint of the water surface rises above the horizon line like fog in the layer of clouds. Towards the top, the sky clears into a deep blue. The light of the sun can be sensed between the clouds. No specific time of day can be identified. A man in a brown monk's robe stands on the apex of the bank and pensively looks out over the water. Some seagulls are flying around.

Image composition

The radically empty picture manages in an elementary way with only four objects: monk, beach, sea and sky. The new image lacks any depth of perspective. The sky above the horizon line, as if drawn with a ruler, fills five sixths of the picture surface. The image is built up in a horizontal layering, the monk is the only vertical moment. The image geometry is conceived from the position of the monk, who stands on the apex of a bank rising from the left at an obtuse angle. The water acts as a negative form of the river bank, which the sky ripping open above takes up in mirror image. The increase in brightness values ​​is also reflected on the horizon line. The amorphous dark area is tied up at the level of the monk's head, as if the gloom unfolds like thought material streaming away. The land-water zone and the vast wall of the sky seem to collide on the horizon in comparable foldable areas. The statics of these abstract surface figures is brought into a tangible tension through the transparent color transitions of the glaze. "Never before had a landscape painting confronted the various aggregate states of matter so soberly, so densely and so unconnected." In the image geometry of the shore line and the sky, two hyperbolas mirrored on the horizon appear in their aesthetic effect, as they are later in the painting The Great Enclosure to be perfected. The aesthetic system of the golden section most frequently used by Friedrich is not used here.

Carl Blechen (attributed to): Landscape with a hermit , around 1822

Break with pictorial tradition

With the monk by the sea, Friedrich breaks with the pictorial tradition of landscape painting. The areas of sea, beach and sky are spatially layered without transitions. The classic “chain of images” through which the painting is “accessible” is missing. The artist dispenses with the usual framed show that the romantic Carl Blechen , for example, practiced in his variant of a monk looking out to sea. The viewer is not introduced to the action. The delimitation of the picture prompted the viewer Heinrich von Kleist to comment: in its “monotony and shorelessness” it appears “as if one's eyelids had been cut off”. This radicalism is unique in the imagery of Romanticism

Image interpretation

In modern art history, with the assumption that the painting was open-minded, a no longer manageable amount of texts for the interpretation of the painting emerged from the beginning of the 1970s. In principle, the religious and political dimensions of the image are recognized for this dialogue between a lonely person and nature. In the evaluation of the picture statement, four essential interpretive patterns can be recognized:

  • The conviction that a Protestant clergyman stands on the dune bank, who humbly endures earthly darkness in order to hope in divine grace for the bright light of the afterlife, determines the religious interpretation of the work.
  • With the generation of meaning from biography and work process, the more detailed circumstances of the origin of the monk by the sea become the preferred object of consideration. Aesthetic structures of the picture play a role here, as do possible theological influences on the painter.
  • Recognizing the monk by the sea as the embodiment of the sublime and sublime is a modern interdisciplinary theories that occupy not only art historians, but also Germanists and philosophers. The awareness of being powerless at the mercy of the forces of nature and history can lead to a feeling of sublimity through the ability of the subject to self-arrogant ideas.
  • The nihilism thesis formulates a complete hopelessness of the monk abandoned by God. In the political context of the failed French Revolution and the conquest of Europe by Napoleon , the situation does not seem to be changeable.

Own interpretation

A text from Friedrich about the monk by the sea has come down to us, which was a copy of a letter from the painter among the papers left by Amalie von Beulwitz. The original text probably comes from a letter to Johannes Schulze in February 1809 .

“Since we are talking about descriptions here, I want to share one of my descriptions with you, about one of my pictures that I have not [s] t [recently] completed; or actually, my thoughts, about a picture; It cannot be called the description. Namely, it is a piece of seascapes, a barren sandy beach in front, then the moving sea, and so the air. A man in a black robe walks profoundly on the beach; Might fly anxiously screams around him, as if to warn him not to venture out into the rough sea. - This was the description, now the thoughts come: And do you sans from morning until evening, from evening until the falling midnight; nevertheless you would not conceive, not fathom, the inexplicable beyond! With overconfident conceit, if you think you will be a light to posterity, to clear out the darkness of the future! What holy prophecy is only seen and known in faith; finally to know and understand! Deep are your footsteps on the barren sandy beach; but a gentle wind blows over it, and your spuhr is no longer seen: foolish man full of vain conceit! "

- Caspar David Friedrich

The monk

Caspar David Friedrich: Self-Portrait , 1810

The identity of the monk depicted has received a great deal of attention since the Berlin exhibition of 1810. The term “Capuchin” for the figure on the back is memorized from the Kleist article . However, it is questionable whether the person depicted is a monk. Friedrich himself only described the figure as a “man in a black robe”, for Christian August Semler it was “a bald old man in a brown robe”. When the pair of images was sent to the academy exhibition, the two landscapes did not yet have a title; the catalog noted Two Landscapes in Oil . The figure in the robe was initially designed differently by the painter: the person on the bank was originally shown in side profile, not as a back figure, which can still be seen in the position of the feet, and the upper body was later painted over.

Helmut Börsch-Supan assumes that the painter portrayed himself with the monk and refers to the self-portrait from 1810. Werner Hofmann believes that Friedrich exposes his other self as a monk by the sea to the dangers of nature. The theological image idea also allows the conclusion that a mythological type that cannot be personalized is meant, in which every doubting faith can recognize himself.

The Protestant pastor Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten, known for the painter, with his legendary shore sermons in Vitt on Rügen could have been a model for the figure of a clergyman on the beach of the Baltic Sea.

Back figure

Since the beginning of oil painting in 1807, Friedrich took the figure from behind in the picture. With the monk by the sea , she gains weight for the image and symbolic content for the first time. The encounter between man and nature takes on a dialogic character through the back figure and at the same time emphasizes the transcendental infinity, created in the aperspectival and measurable spatial quality. Man responds to overpowering nature with his spiritual attitude. The loneliness of the individual monk is canceled out in the union of image and contemplation.

Back figures have an art-historical tradition that goes back to antiquity, mostly as a symbol for moral-theological reflections. Friedrich interprets the function of the back figure in different ways. Often it is evident as accessories to enhance the experience of nature by the viewer of the picture. With paintings like the Wanderer Above the Sea of ​​Fog, it seems unclear whether the painter wants to hide the identity of the person depicted or whether the figure cannot be personalized at all.

Geographic location

Caspar David Friedrich: The Cross on the Baltic Sea , around 1806/07

Even in the contemporary commentaries on the monk by the sea , the Baltic Sea is mentioned as the sea depicted. With knowledge of the Western Pomeranian coastal landscape, it becomes clear that there is typically no such sharp-edged beach line on the flat coast. It would have to be the edge of the precipice at Arkona, for example. Such a motif can hardly be derived from the painting.

The efforts to assign the monk a topography on the Baltic Sea concentrate on the determination of a suitable area on Rügen with the help of the pen drawing south coast of Rügen (Mönchgut) from August 17, 1801. Kurt Wilhelm-Kästner recognized the "Beach of Mönchgut" , Werner Sumowski the "recording of the Groß-Zickerschen Höft", the Hamburg catalog from 1972 the "South Coast of Rügen", Hermann Zschoche the Groß-Zickerschen Höft from a point of view with Gager and Werner Busch the view of the Nordperd south of Lobbe.

Biographical background

Caroline Bardua: Portrait of Caspar David Friedrichs , 1810

In order to interpret the monk by the sea as the painter's soul landscape, the biography is asked about events that could cause emotional shocks. The apparently most painful loss of his life occurs at the time of the work process when the transition from the fisherman's subject to the monk's image takes place. Friedrich's sister Catharina Dorothea Sponholz died on December 22, 1808 in Breesen . After the early death of his mother, she was considered to be a substitute mother in education and care. The feeling of loneliness and sadness could have determined the motives of his art in the months that followed. Parallel to the monk , the mountain landscape with a rainbow was created , which also addresses a gloomy questioning of nature. The use of the rainbow here, as in the landscape with a rainbow (1809), suggests a memory image. Immediately after the death of his sister, after the completion of the Tetschen Altar in the Ramdohr dispute , the painter had to expose himself to a previously unheard of hurtful criticism of his art.

The painter's father died on November 6, 1809 in Greifswald. On a portrait of the painter Caroline Bardua dated 1809/10, Friedrich can be seen with a mourning armband, which he may have put on as a symbol of protest against the French occupation.

In July 1810 the painter went on a hike through the Giant Mountains with Georg Friedrich Kersting . In August, with the painting Morning in the Giant Mountains, a similarly rigorous human-nature constellation was created as with the monk .

After returning to Dresden, Friedrich learned of the death of Queen Luise and designed a funerary monument for her. The death of the monarch, whose meeting with Napoleon in Tilsit was seen as a sacrifice for her people, triggered an indescribable sadness. This event is significant as the monk would look at the place where the queen died on the south bank in Hohenzieritz at the possible location on the north bank of the Tollensesees .

theology

Friedrich Schleiermacher

Through his own interpretation, Friedrich provides the religious theme of reflecting on the prospect of the hereafter. Helmut Börsch-Supan considers thinking about death to be the most important content of the picture. The pictorial space is divided into the world on this side and the other. This raises the question of what theological foundation the painter rests on with his Christian ideas that have become images. Kleist deduces from the brown robe and bare feet that he has a Capuchin, a Franciscan mendicant , in front of him. This contradicts the painter's remark about the man in the black robe, by which he could mean another order. The Capuchins offer themselves as an explanation because, as opponents of Napoleon, they could have been sympathetic to the painter. Little can be derived from this theologically.

The theological impulse for Friedrich is discussed in a more substantial way, in two directions, at the time the picture was created. Werner Busch portrays Friedrich Schleiermacher as the most important influence of all for Friedrich's thought. The theologian visited the painter on September 12, 1810 in his Dresden studio, that is, in the phase of the final changes with the Mönch am Meer . Schleiermacher's basic Protestant convictions and an aestheticization of religion created a special proximity to Friedrich's motifs and statements. Willi Geismeier clearly saw in Friedrich the attitude of the revival Christianity developing at the beginning of the 19th century .

Psychoanalysis

The monk by the sea became the subject of psychoanalytic considerations primarily because of the proximity of romanticism to the thinking of psychoanalysis . Christian August Semler, one of the key witnesses for the creation process of the monk, raised the reverie, the agitation of the mind through daydreaming thinking, to the artistic goal of romantic landscape painting. The viewer should let thoughts and feelings "be lured out of the soul, as it were" through the work of art.

The traditional reactions of contemporary viewers of the monk by the sea are interesting material for psychoanalysts, for example when Kleist experiences something as a viewer that cannot be seen in the picture, but he talks about what happens between him and the picture. In today's psychoanalytical view of art, the effect of the work of art unfolds in a space between the visible and the invisible. But Caspar David Friedrich's work process and psychopathography are also of interest in this context. With an extreme authenticity, Friedrich succeeded in transforming his own experiences of loss and loneliness into a mood visible in the picture, which appeals to a deep-seated unconscious fear in the viewer.

The abbey in the oak forest as a counterpart

Caspar David Friedrich:
Abbey in the Eichwald , 1810

The Monk by the Sea and the Abbey in the Eichwald form a pair of images that were shown for the first time during the Berlin Academy Exhibition of 1810. Thematically, the two images can only be explored together. However, the contradictions and the dialogue between them are a mystery. In the interpretation that the monk is finally carried to the grave by the sea in the coffin of the funeral procession, the offer of the widespread picture narration is exhausted. Helmut Börsch-Supan sees the pair of pictures as belonging to the circle of pictures with age themes, i.e. with reference to works such as the Sepia Spring, Morning, Childhood (1803) or the painting The Levels of Life (around 1835). Formally, the images are completely different: here horizontal layers and the condensation of three uniformities, there a varied syntax and dialogue between different areas of form.

Friedrich had previously designed several paintings and sepias as counterparts, such as Summer and Winter (1808).

Work history

The work process

Caspar David Friedrich: Sea Beach with Fisherman , 1807

The work on the painting has a longer motivic lead. The examination of the image by means of infrared reflectography shows two ships to the left and right of the monk, piles with fishing nets in the bank zone and the correction of the person depicted in the side profile towards the figure from behind. The layout of the work is therefore very similar to Friedrich's earliest oil painting Sea Beach with Fisherman , which was created in late 1807. If one imagines the Fischer painting with a completely cleared shore zone and as a colored negative, this comes very close to the monk at the sea . It seems as if the painter initially intended to repeat or further develop the Fischer motif. Overall, the monk was subjected to four changes. The canvas could have been started longer before 1809, because in April 1809 Christian August Semler could no longer see any sailing ships.

“What I particularly liked about this picture, however, was the significance that the artist was able to give to the simple scene through a single figure. A bald old man in a brown robe stands on that beach, almost completely turned towards the sea and, as his position and especially the hand supporting the chin indicate, seems to have sunk in deep meditation. "

- Christian August Semler
Caspar David Friedrich: South coast of Rügen (Mönchgut) , 1801

While Semler noticed "a gray air heavy with fumes", Helene von Kügelgen wrote on June 22, 1809: "The sky is pure and indifferently calm, no storm, no sun, no moon, no thunderstorm [...]" Before the exhibition was presented, Carl Friedrich Ernst Frommann stood in front of the painting on September 24, 1810 and saw "the Baltic Sea with beautiful flashing waves at the last quarter of the moon and the faintly flashing morning star". The final version of the sky was therefore created shortly before the picture was sent to the Berlin exhibition, which was already too late.

For the beach on which the monk is standing, a front section of the washed pen drawing of the south coast of Rügen (Mönchgut) from August 17, 1801, made during Friedrich's second trip to Rügen.

Provenance

The painting was together with the abbey in the Eichwald on the Berlin exhibition of 1810 by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. acquired. The location of the picture was the Palais Unter den Linden until 1837 , 1837–1844 the New Palace in Potsdam , 1844–1865 the Bellevue Palace , later the Wiesbaden Palace , and after 1906 the Berlin City Palace . Before the pair of images came to the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, they showed the administration of the State Palaces and Gardens in Charlottenburg Palace .

Friedrich Wilhelm IV.

Friedrich Wilhelm IV.

The Prussian Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm IV is said to have bought the pair of paintings Mönch am Meer and Abbey in Eichwald . The wish of the then 15-year-old boy was astonishing. Diary notes or other statements about it are not known. Under the given circumstances, the Prussian king could not take it for granted that the rather art-remote Friedrich Wilhelm III complied with his son's request and used 450 thalers from the royal house's empty cash register due to the war. In his younger years, the Crown Prince was more interested in art than in other things, drawing wherever possible. His main interest was in Gothic buildings. The pair of pictures did not meet the crown prince's known preferences in painting.

It is believed that he acquired the two paintings as consolation images. The death of the mother, Queen Luise, in July 1810 had deeply shaken the boy's soul. Perhaps he recognized the religious content in the Monk by the Sea . At the beginning of 1810, the new prince tutor Jean Pierre Francoise Ancillon changed the up until then liberal educational program of the heir to the throne and ordained daily religious retreats under the guidance of court and cathedral preacher Friedrich Samuel Gottfried Sack . Since the queen's death, questions of the afterlife have become the focus of religious doctrinal discussions.

For the king, the wish of his son provided orientation for further acquisitions for the royal collection. At the Berlin Academy Exhibition in 1812 he bought Friedrich's two paintings Morning in the Riesengebirge and the Garden Terrace for the Prussian Palaces, and at the Berlin Academy Exhibition in 1816 as a gift for the Crown Prince's 21st birthday, the paintings Söller in front of Domplatz in the twilight and a view of one Port . Friedrich Wilhelm IV visited the painter on March 3, 1830 in his Dresden studio, but did not acquire any of the pictures he saw there.

restoration

The painting on very fine canvas with thin, translucent layers of paint was susceptible to technical, mechanical and age-related damage from the start. The first intensive restoration was carried out in 1906. Today only a greatly reduced original substance is left. In 2013/2014 the restorers of the Staatliche Museen Berlin carefully reversed improper restorations according to today's standards and replaced them with reversible materials using modern restoration methods.

Since the restoration, the painting now has a visibly different color, which is based on a different shade as well as a higher saturation. The main reason for this new color effect is the removal of the many old layers of varnish that previously had a gray haze effect on the picture. In the previously rather gloomy gray-blue sky, the typical light red components can now also be seen, and the entire picture appears brighter.

Classification in the complete work

Caspar David Friedrich: The Wanderer Above the Sea of ​​Fog , 1818

In Friedrich's oeuvre, the monk by the sea can be viewed from various perspectives as a turning point and the climax of his work. The acquisition of the picture by the Prussian king brought him not only great public attention with his admission to the Berlin Academy but also professional recognition. In developing the composition, the painter no longer ties in with the formal radicalism of the monk. Only the large enclosure (1832) shows a similarly spectacular aesthetic effect.

Thematically, the confrontation with death and loneliness ends with the monk, in which the painter can be assumed to be deeply concerned, beginning with the Sepia ruin Eldena with burial from 1800. The loneliness in the arranged nature remained a continuous motif, varied again and again and provided with a new dramatic sense of the image. These include the mountain landscape with a rainbow , the winter landscape or The Wanderer above the Sea of ​​Fog .

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Mountain Landscape with Rainbow , 1810

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Winter Landscape , 1811

Werner Hofmann and Detlef Stapf see the Weimar Sepia from 1805 ( pilgrimage at sunrise , autumn evening at the lake ) and the Viennese paintings from 1807 ( seashore with fishermen , fog ) as formal preliminary stages for the two key images The Monk by the Sea and Abbey in the Oak Forest , There is also an updated picture narration that is linked to the history of the Tollensesees .

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Pilgrimage at sunset , 1805

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Autumn evening at the lake , around 1805

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Sea Beach with Fisherman , 1807

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Fog , 1807

The hermit motif

Caspar Scheuren : Illustration to Eichendorff's "Einsiedler" , 1825

A monk (Greek monachós , derived from mónos "alone") is in the original sense of the word a hermit (derived from the Greek erẽmos "abandoned"): a lonely person. Christian hermits went into the desert to communicate with God. The aspect of being exposed in the desert changed later: The hermit lives alone in nature, but protected in a hermitage (Hermitage). The figure in Caspar David Friedrich's picture corresponds to a hermit in the original sense: It stands lonely in a desolate environment.

Hermits have been depicted in art since ancient times. In romanticism, the theme of the hermits took on a new quality with the programmatic search for redemption in the natural wonder of creation. Friedrich brought the hermit back into the open countryside. Carl Blechen made the hermit motif one of the main themes of his painting, his painting Landscape with Hermit is also regarded as a program image of German Romanticism.

  • Icon of the hermit Onophrios

  • Albrecht Dürer: Penitent St. Jerome in the desert , around 1496

  • Wolf Traut :
    Hermit , 1513

  • Carl Spitzweg :
    Einsiedler playing the violin , around 1862

reception

Heinrich von Kleist

Heinrich von Kleist

A euphoric review of the monk by the sea in the Berlin exhibition appeared on October 13, 1810 under the heading Sensations in front of Friedrich's seascape in the Berliner Abendbl Blätter signed with cb, the abbreviation of Clemens Brentano . The original text is based on an ironic dialogue scene written by Brentano with Achim von Arnim .

Heinrich von Kleist completely rewrote this text in his editorial responsibility, so Kleist is considered the author of the article. The criticism intended by Brentano and Arnim of the readings of art, which are exposed as pure educational reminiscences, is partially reversed by Kleist. The text still has a decisive influence on the history of the monk's reception by the sea , mostly without considering the context in which it was created.

“It is wonderful to look out at an endless desert of water in an infinite solitude on the seashore, under a cloudy sky. This also means that one has gone there, that one has to go back, that one wants to cross over, that one cannot, that one misses everything about life, and yet the voice of life in the rushing tide, in the blowing of the air, in the Moving clouds, the lonely screaming of birds heard. This includes a claim that the heart makes, and a break, to express myself in this way, that nature makes. But this is impossible in front of the picture, and what I was supposed to find in the picture itself I only found between myself and the picture, namely a claim that my heart made on the picture and a breakdown that the picture made for me ; and so I became the Capuchin myself , the image was the dune, but that where I should look out with longing, the sea, was completely missing. Nothing can be more sad and uncomfortable than this position in the world: the only spark of life in the vast realm of death, the lonely center in the lonely circle. The picture, with its two or three mysterious objects, lies there like the apocalypse, as if it had Young's thoughts in the night, and since it has nothing but the frame in the foreground, in its uniformity and shorelessness, it is when one it looks like your eyelids have been cut off. Nevertheless, the painter has undoubtedly broken a completely new path in the field of his art; and I am convinced that, with his mind, a square mile of Brandenburg sand could be represented, with a barberry bush on which a crow fluffed lonely, and that this image would have a truly Ossian or Kosegarten effect. Yes, if you painted this landscape with your own chalk and with your own water; so, I think, one could make the foxes and wolves howl with it: the most powerful thing one can, without a doubt, teach in praise of this type of landscape painting. - But my own feelings about this wonderful painting are too confused; therefore, before I dare to say it in full, I have resolved to teach myself through the utterances of those who pass it by in pairs from morning to evening. "

- Heinrich von Kleist

Since the presentation of the picture at the Berlin academy exhibition in 1810, the basic tone of the picture interpretation has been given by Heinrich von Kleist, which arose directly from the spirit of the romantic era. The then still young genre of visual criticism required the viewer to update the work.

The "tragedy of the landscape"

Carl Gustav Carus reported that the French sculptor Pierre Jean David d'Angers exclaimed in Friedrich's studio when he saw his pictures: “Voilá un homme, qui a découvert la tragédie du paysage!” Since then, Friedrich has been considered the discoverer of the tragedy of the landscape. The quote is occasionally used as being only applicable to the monk by the sea and the abbey in the oak forest. Even if the monk makes the metaphor particularly vivid, David d'Angers meant Friedrich's way of painting, his subjects and the moods that are conveyed through the depiction of individual figures in the midst of nature that is perceived as overpowering.

“How has it always appealed to the mind in its own way when Friedrich, in his landscape tragedies, shows the whole seriousness of life in the picture through a few granite blocks, poor scrub and rising moon, or through a lonely seashore with clouds moving over it brought. "

- Carl Gustav Carus

More contemporary reception

The reception of the picture at the beginning of the 19th century did not focus exclusively on the harrowing effect of the picture and the break with convention in landscape painting, as was the case with Kleist. The compensatory aesthetic of consolation in art of this time wanted to see the viewer conveyed religious elevation through the effect of the image. In contrast to this, in other reviews of the Berlin exhibition of 1810, the pair of pictures Mönch am Meer and Abbey in Eichwald emphasized the “character of the fearful gruesome”. For contemporaries who attributed Friedrich's melancholy to a longing for death, the monk evoked melancholy feelings.

Friedrich's contemporaries largely ruled out that painting, viewed in an abstract way, could produce a sufficient sense of the image. In a fit of anger about the “current state of art”, Goethe is said to have said to Sulpiz Boisserée “painter Friedrich his pictures can just as easily be seen on the head”. Apparently the monk by the sea was meant here.

20th century

During National Socialism , the blood-and-soil ideology adopted landscape images as racial self-portraits of the German artists. The magazine Rasse named the monk by the sea as characteristic of the "Nordic race" of Frederick.

In the documentary feature film by Peter Schamoni Caspar David Friedrich - Limits of Time from 1986, the monk by the sea is assigned a central role in Friedrich's life and work. The Prussian Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm IV as the owner of the painting also has a say.

For Friederike Mayröcker , the monk was a stimulus for her book Brütt or The Sighing Gardens (1998). She writes about it that she “saw the painting four years ago in Berlin, IN UPUME, contributed to the creation of my book brütt”.

Effects in art

James Abbot McNeill: Trouville , 1865
Gustave Courbet:
Le bord de mer à Palavas , 1854

With the Mönch am Meer , Friedrich influenced later generations of artists into the 21st century. This applies to the structure of the picture as well as the confrontation with overwhelming nature, fear and death.

One can see an immediate effect in the landscapes by the sea of ​​Friedrich's friend Carl Gustav Carus. In the 19th century, James Abbott McNeill Whistler with his painting Trouville or Gustave Courbet with the painting Le bord de mer à Palavas by should be mentioned. As early as 1905, Courbet's painting The Wave was used as an art historical comparison .

In classical modernism, The Scream by Edvard Munch and Lionel Feininger's Vogelwolke and Dünenstrand II are catchy examples.

In contemporary art, Mark Rothko with his layered areas of color, Gerhard Richter and Gotthard Graubner have avowedly referred to the monk . The exhibition Mark Rothko - Emotions in Color at the Hamburger Kunsthalle 2008 juxtaposed pictures by the American painter with those of Friedrich. Gerhard Richter sees himself in the tradition of the monk with his seascapes . Gotthard Graubner was inspired by the work of the Romantic painter with the pillow pictures and the First Fog Room - Hommage à Caspar David Friedrich (1968).

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)
  • Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion. Publishing house CH Beck, Munich 2003.
  • Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work. 2 vols. Munich 2011.
  • Nina Hinrichs: Caspar David Friedrich - a German artist from the north. Analysis of Friedrich's reception in the 19th century and under National Socialism. Publishing house Ludwig, Kiel 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.
  • Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrich's hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts. Greifswald 2014, network-based P-Book
  • Werner Sumowski: Caspar David Friedrich studies. Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 1970.
  • Herrmann Zschoche: Caspar David Friedrich. The letters. ConferencePoint Verlag, Hamburg 2006.

Web links

Commons : The Monk by the Sea  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 46
  2. ↑ Eberhard Roters: Beyond Arcadia. The romantic landscape. DuMont Kunstverlag, Cologne 1995, p. 27.
  3. ^ Werner Hofmann: Caspar David Friedrich. Natural reality and art truth . CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46475-0 , p. 53.
  4. ↑ Helmut Börsch-Supan: Comments on Caspar David Friedrich's “Monk by the Sea” . In: Journal of the German Association for Art Research XIX, 1965, p. 76 f.
  5. ↑ The monk is back. ( Memento of the original from April 18, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. On the website of the Alte Nationalgalerie, accessed on January 21, 2016.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.smb.museum
  6. ^ Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 46
  7. ^ Werner Hofmann: Caspar David Friedrich. Natural reality and art truth . CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46475-0 , p. 57
  8. ^ Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 76
  9. ^ Jens Christian Jensen: Caspar David Friedrich. Life and work. DuMont Verlag, Cologne 1999, p. 86
  10. ^ Nina Hinrichs: Caspar David Friedrich - a German artist from the north. Analysis of Friedrich's reception in the 19th century and under National Socialism. Verlag Ludwig, Kiel 2011, p. 86 f.
  11. ^ Kleist in "Berliner Abendblätter" of October 13, 1810, cited above. Jörg Lauster : The enchantment of the world. A cultural history of Christianity. CH Beck, Munich 2014, p. 488.
  12. ^ Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 47
  13. ^ 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. 303
  14. ↑ Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrichs hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts . Greifswald 2014, p. 329, network-based P-Book
  15. ^ Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 46 f.
  16. ↑ Johannes Grave: Caspar David Friedrich and the theory of the sublime. Friedrich's "Sea of ​​Ice" as an answer to a central concept of contemporary aesthetics. VDG-Verlag, Weimar 2001, ISBN 3-89739-192-9
  17. ↑ Donat de Chapeaurouge: Comments on Caspar David Friedrichs Tetschener Altar. In: Pantheon 39, pp. 50-55
  18. ^ Herrmann Zschoche: Caspar David Friedrich. The letters . ConferencePoint Verlag, Hamburg 2006 p. 45 f.
  19. ^ A b c Christian August Semler: About some landscapes by the painter Friedrich in Dresden . In: Journal des Luxus und der Moden, April 1809, p. 233 f. ( Digitized version ( Memento of the original from April 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. ) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / zs.thulb.uni-jena.de
  20. ^ Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 61
  21. ^ 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. 303
  22. ^ Werner Hofmann: Caspar David Friedrich. Natural reality and art truth . CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46475-0 , p. 56
  23. ↑ Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrichs hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts . Greifswald 2014, p. 320, network-based P-Book
  24. ^ Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 65
  25. ^ Jens Christian Jensen: Caspar David Friedrich. Life and work. DuMont Verlag, Cologne 1999, p. 182
  26. ^ Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 59
  27. ↑ Kurt Wilhelm-Kästner among others: Caspar David Friedrich and his home. Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 1940, p. 72
  28. ^ Werner Sumowski: Caspar David Friedrich studies . Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 1970, p. 157
  29. ^ Herrmann Zschoche: Caspar David Friedrich. The letters . ConferencePoint Verlag, Hamburg 2006 p. 24
  30. ^ Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 57
  31. ↑ Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work . 2 vol., Munich 2011, p. 615
  32. ↑ Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrichs hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts . Greifswald 2014, p. 210, network-based P-Book
  33. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan: Caspar David Friedrich . Prestel Verlag, Munich 1973 p. 82
  34. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan: Caspar David Friedrich. Feeling as law . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 2008, p. 179
  35. ^ Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 65
  36. ^ Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 74
  37. ↑ Willi Geismeier: On the importance and developmental position of a feeling for nature and landscape representation in Caspar David Friedrich . Dissertation, Berlin 1966, p. 118
  38. ↑ Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel: Two trees in the garden: On the psychological meaning of the father and mother images . Psychoanalytic Studies. Klett-Cotta / JG Cotta'sche Buchhandlung Successor; Edition: 2, 1992
  39. ↑ Hilmar Frank: Prospects into the immeasurable. Perspectivity and open-mindedness with Caspar David Friedrich . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2004, p. 148
  40. ↑ Ekkehard Gattig: The visibility of the unconscious. Psychoanalytic comments on the effect of the work of art . In: Gisela Greve (Ed.): Caspar David Friedrich. Interpretations in dialogue. Edition discord, Tübingen 2006
  41. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan: Caspar David Friedrich . Prestel Verlag, Munich 1973 p. 84
  42. ^ Werner Hofmann: Caspar David Friedrich. Natural reality and art truth . CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46475-0 , p. 61
  43. ↑ Birgit Verwiebe: Caspar David Friedrich - The Watzmann. SMB DuMont, Cologne 2004, p. 99 ff.
  44. ↑ Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrichs hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts . Greifswald 2014, p. 358, network-based P-Book
  45. ^ Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 59
  46. ^ Letter to Friedericke Volkmann, June 22, 1809 . Marie Helene von Kügelgen: A picture of life in letters . Edited by VA and E. von Kügelgen, Leipzig 1900, p. 161
  47. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan: Caspar David Friedrich's Landscapes with Self-Portraits . In: The Burlington Magazine 114, 1972, p. 624
  48. ↑ Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work . 2 vol., Munich 2011, p. 309
  49. ↑ Helmut Börsch-Supan: Comments on Caspar David Friedrich's “Monk by the Sea” . In: Journal of the German Association for Art History XIX, 1965, p. 63 f.
  50. ↑ Helmut Börsch-Supan: Comments on Caspar David Friedrich's “Monk by the Sea” . In: Journal of the German Association for Art History XIX, 1965, p. 65
  51. ↑ Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrichs hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts . Greifswald 2014, p. 209, network-based P-Book
  52. ↑ Malve Countess Rothkirch: The "romantic" on the Prussian throne. Portrait of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. 1795-1861 . Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1990, p. 27
  53. ^ Herrmann Zschoche: Caspar David Friedrich. The letters . ConferencePoint Verlag, Hamburg 2006 p. 203.
  54. ^ 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. 251
  55. ^ Werner Hofmann: Caspar David Friedrich. Natural reality and art truth . CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46475-0 , p. 63
  56. ↑ Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrichs hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts . Greifswald 2014, p. 332, network-based P-Book
  57. ↑ See Duden online: Monk and Hermit
  58. ↑ Michael Zajonz: Sheet metal before sheet metal. Arsprototo 2/2010, p. 27
  59. ^ Nina Hinrichs: Caspar David Friedrich - a German artist from the north. Analysis of Friedrich's reception in the 19th century and under National Socialism. Verlag Ludwig, Kiel 2011, p. 89
  60. ↑ This comparison is originally from Brentano. It refers to a work by the English poet Edward Young : The complaint, or night thoughts , German: Klagen oder Nachtgedanken (1742–1745).
  61. ↑ Heinrich von Kleist: Sensations in front of Friedrich's seascape. In: Berliner Abendblätter, 12th Blatt, October 13th 1810, Berlin Cotta, Reprint, Wiesbaden 1980, page 47 f.
  62. ^ Carl Gustav Carus: Memoirs and Memories . Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, 2 volumes, Weimar 1965/66, p. 172 f., P. 552
  63. ↑ Martin H. Petrich: Philipp Otto Runge. Pomeranian life and country images. Part 2, Stettin 1887, p. 244 f.
  64. ^ Carl Gustav Carus: Napoleon in Fontainebleau by Paul Delaroche. In: Mnemosyne, Pfortzheim 1848, p. 127
  65. ^ Nina Hinrichs: Caspar David Friedrich - a German artist from the north. Analysis of Friedrich's reception in the 19th century and under National Socialism. Verlag Ludwig, Kiel 2011, p. 92.
  66. ↑ C. Töpfer: Drawings from my wandering life . Hanover 1823
  67. ↑ Anonymous: Some things about the Berlin art exhibition in autumn 1810 (described on the first day of the same) . Journal for art, art stuff, artistry and fashion. 1810, II, p. 275 f.
  68. ↑ Quoted from Klaus Lankheit: The early romanticism and the basics of "non-representational" painting . New Heidelberg Yearbooks, New Series, 1951, p. 58
  69. ^ Nina Hinrichs: Caspar David Friedrich - a German artist from the north. Analysis of Friedrich's reception in the 19th century and under National Socialism. Verlag Ludwig, Kiel 2011, p. 86.
  70. ↑ K. Most: Race and Art in Runge, Friedrich, Kersting, three painters of the Romantic period . In. Rasse, Volume 1, 1936, pp. 10-13
  71. ↑ Friederike Mayröcker: And I shook a darling . Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main, 2006.
  72. ↑ Ferdinand Laban: Report on the Berlin exhibition of the century . Die Kunst XIII, 1905/06, p. 289 ff.