The stages of life
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| The stages of life |
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| Caspar David Friedrich , around 1835 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 72.5 × 94 cm |
| Museum of fine arts |
The stages of life is an allegorical painting by the painter Caspar David Friedrich .
description
The picture shows a bank on the Baltic Sea coast at dusk. At sea, three sailing ships are about to return home. The sails of the largest ship in the foreground were already being reefed . Two smaller sailing boats are still fully rigged near the shore. On the embankment there is a group of five people who can be identified as city people by their clothes. In their midst is a boy holding up a Swedish flag while a girl picks it up. To the right of them sits a woman who bows toward the two children and has raised her right hand in a gesture.
The group forms a semicircle with the children on the outermost point; left and right of them a younger man and a young woman. On the far left is an old man who is a bit off the circle.
The wife and children are dressed for summer, while the old man wears a coat and a fur hat. This older man turns his back on the viewer, reminding us of other works by the artist.
Five people are on the beach and five ships are at sea. The ship that represents the artist is almost back on the shore and thus at the end of life, whereas the other ships are moving away from the shore - the "younger" ships reflect the children and the ships in the distance reflect the parents.
The stages of life in the picture
The phases of life are reflected in both the people and the boats. Caspar David Friedrich in fur is already facing the afterlife. As a slender man with a top hat he is still full of energy, the younger woman and her children are an expression of youth. The two boats on the horizon embody transience, the large sailing boat with two accompanying boats in the foreground embodies hope, his wife and his children.
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Friedrich's place of birth Greifswald belonged to Sweden from 1630 to 1815 with Western Pomerania . The painting shows Friedrich's younger daughter Agnes Adelheid and his son Gustav Adolf 20 years after Greifswald's incorporation into Prussia with a Swedish flag.
The Swedish writer Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom wrote about the painter:
- " Friedrich is Pommer ... and thinks he is half a Swede " (in travel pictures from romantic Germany , 1859).
The view goes over the headland to the open sea, behind which Sweden lies. For the liberal-democratic citizens, Sweden was the land of free farmers. Friedrich also had his son, who is holding the Swedish flag in his hand, baptized in the name of Swedish kings ("Gustav Adolf").
Individual evidence
- ↑ 100 masterpieces. The stages of life of Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). In: TV hearing and seeing, 29 2011, p. 130
literature
- Wieland Schmied (ed.): Harenberg Museum of Painting. 525 masterpieces from seven centuries. Harenberg Lexikon Verlag, Dortmund 1999, ISBN 3-611-00814-1
- Wieland Schmied: Caspar David Friedrich. DuMont, Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-8321-7207-6
Web links
- Museum of Fine Arts: information about the painting