Village landscape with morning lighting

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Village landscape with morning lighting (Caspar David Friedrich)
Village landscape with morning lighting
Caspar David Friedrich , 1822
Oil on canvas
55.0 × 71.0 cm
Old National Gallery Berlin

Village landscape with morning lighting, also called Lonely Tree , A Green Plain or Harz Landscape is a painting by Caspar David Friedrich from 1822 . The painting in oil on canvas in the format 55 cm x 71 cm is in the Berlin National Gallery (there as The Lonely Tree ), together with its counterpart Moonrise by the Sea .

Image description

The painting shows a green landscape near the village that extends into the middle distance. In the center is a large oak that has largely died in the crown. A shepherd leans against the trunk of the oak with his shepherd's staff, his flock grazes in the meadow. The plain is enlivened by ponds with swimming birds, groups of trees and bushes, as well as forests with houses with plumes of smoke rising from their chimneys. The sky is reflected in the ponds. At the end of the brightly illuminated plain, the church towers of a city silhouette can be seen, behind them the dark mountains of a low mountain range rise, whose hazy gray seems related to the blue-gray of the sky.

Structure and aesthetics

The painting, which appears bright and friendly overall, is divided into three parallel image zones that are separated by different lighting and colors. The mighty oak standing roughly on the central axis connects the horizon lines running into the distance and creates a certain spatial continuum. The tree intersects the contour of the mountain range exactly in the depression between two peaks where it begins to die. The shaded foreground and the dark cloud section in front form a “window” into the illuminated distance. Due to the richness of the landscape's motifs, the viewer's gaze is drawn from the shepherd on the trunk of the oak into the depths of the picture to the rural dwellings, to the truncated Gothic silhouette and to the mountain ranges. The coherent, deeply developed space is rather untypical for Friedrich's painting. In this way, however, Friedrich succeeds in eliminating any accidental composition and creating a diamond-shaped frame.

Image interpretation

Landscape with oak behind the Breesen rectory, 2008

Helmut Börsch-Supan's religious interpretation sees earthly life represented in the village landscape , with references to transcendence . The connection to the supernatural is established through the reflections of the sky in the pond or the distant churches. A tree stump and the ruin of a castle are symbols of transience. Hubertus Gaßner provides a historical interpretation by assigning a developmental sense to the spatial zones layered one behind the other. The uncultivated marshland embodied the prehistoric times of mankind, the oak was a symbol of pre-Christian paganism as well as the Germanic prehistoric times, and nature formed by human work extends into the plain.

Peter Märker also recognizes historical epochs in the spatial zones, but calls them the original state of humanity, harmonious social coexistence and the Christian Middle Ages. Symbols such as the partially defoliated oak and the ruin would indicate the transience of the epoch. To reflect human history, Wieland Schmied adds the contemporary political reality of the time of the Restoration, which would only become plausible in dialogue with the old German costume in the counterpart Moonrise by the Sea . Jens Christian Jensen describes a cultural landscape that has been remodeled by man over the centuries and the oak as a symbol of the historical, as a symbol of the past reaching into the present.

Detlef Stapf reconstructs the compilation of the landscape north of the rectory and manor house in Breesen in the foreground of the picture . A meadow with a single oak and a pond with a group of oaks, which lie next to each other in nature, are arranged one behind the other in the painting. In the depths of the picture, a landscape of narrative and longing develops that can be attributed to Friedrich's sister Dorothea, who lived in the Mecklenburg parsonage until 1808. The character of this Breesen landscape has been basically preserved to this day, even through the replanting of trees.

Counterpart

Caspar David Friedrich: Moonrise by the Sea , 1822

With the moonrise by the sea as its counterpart, a contrast to the village landscape is created in many ways : evening and morning, dark and light, water and land, stones and vegetation, townspeople as strangers by the sea and shepherds in the natural idyll. The different interpretations of the village landscape try to find a counterpart. There is agreement that both images are to be thought of together. Wieland Schmied offers that the times of day connect with human history and contemporary political reality. For Detlef Stapf, the two pictures tell of the death of loved ones and farewell to a familiar landscape in Breesen. After the monk by the sea and the abbey in the oak forest, the two paintings are considered the most important pair of images in Friedrich's work.

Suggestion

Johann Christian Klengel: Evening Landscape , 1803

It is undisputed that Friedrich, with the oak as a motif, stood in the center of the village landscape in the iconographic and literary tradition of the Baroque and the Dresden painters of his time. Domenichino and Claude Lorrain provided role models in painting in the 17th century and Jacob Isaacksz in the 18th century . van Ruisdael and Jens Juel as well as Johann Christian Klengel at the beginning of the 19th century . In 1798 , Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten praised the oak as a “tree of God” in his poetry, and a poem written in 1786 by Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart represented such a tree as a national symbol of freedom.

Studies and drawings

The reference to a number of drawings can be proven for the creation of the painting. The drawing Two Landscape Sketches from July 6, 1810 was used for "the mountain ranges in the middle distance that extend into the right and left of the picture". The mountain range in the background has the drawing Landscape with Man; Water with stones from 6./9. July 1810 to the basis. These drawings were made during a hike that Friedrich undertook together with Georg Friedrich Kersting in the Giant Mountains . Following the suggestions made there, the painting Garden Terrace was also created around 1812, which captures the view from the viewing terrace of Erdmannsdorf Castle , on which the same mountain range can be seen in the center, the Schneekoppe , which, however, is framed by two oaks on the side, while in front of the mountain , in the axis of the summit, rises a statue. From the lonely tree , the view of the Giant Mountains, across smaller ponds, corresponds to that of the Buchwald Castle landscape park, famous at the time , where Friedrich was a guest. The oak tree in the foreground can be attributed to the drawing oak tree with stork's nest , made on May 23, 1806 in Neubrandenburg . For the single oak on the left, the study by Weinlaub and Buchen from 13/14 June 1809, supplemented with a few twigs in the picture. The group of four trees on the right in the middle distance can be seen in the drawing Group of large oaks from June 16, 1809, the two oaks next to it in the tree studies from 9/12. June 1809. These drawings were made during Friedrich's stay in Breesen.

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Eichbaum with stork's nest , 1806

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Study of Vine Leaves and Beeches , 1809

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Large group of oaks , 1809

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Tree Studies , 1809

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Two landscape sketches , 1810

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Landscape with a man; Water with Stones , 1810

  • Garden terrace (around 1812)

Provenance, designation, dating

The painting was created in 1822 as a counterpart to the moonrise by the sea for the banker Joachim Heinrich Wilhelm Wagener and was in his collection. In 1861 the picture was acquired from the collection that formed the basis for the Berlin National Gallery. According to the collection catalog from 1828, the painting was dated to 1823 until 1973. In the meantime, different classifications around 1810 or 1830 were not confirmed. A letter from Friedrich to the consul Wagener dated November 1, 1822 announces the delivery of the two pictures for the same month. For reasons unknown, the painter exhibited the paintings in April 1823 at the special exhibition on the occasion of the visit of the Bavarian royal couple in Dresden before they reached the recipient. The term village landscape with morning lighting comes from a directory from 1856 and was included in the catalog raisonné by Helmut Börsch-Supan. In the exhibition of 1823 the landscape was shown with the title Der Morgen, a compilation . The frequently used title "Lonely Tree" comes from Ludwig Thormaehlen , but according to Börsch-Supan, its reduction does not match the image idea. The name Harz landscape was based on the assumption that the mountains in the background are to be assigned to the low mountain range of the Harz and not to the Giant Mountains. In the inventory of the Wagener Collection, the picture has been listed as a green plane since 1828 . There were suggestions that were not further cited in art-historical literature, such as late evening light with an overcast sky (collection catalog 1876) or landscape with the sun set (1906).

Classification in the complete work

Caspar David Friedrich: Landscape with a Rainbow , around 1810

The motif of the picture is unique in Friedrich's work. There is no other painting in the painter's work in which the landscape has been enriched with so many details. The shepherd motif is related to the landscape with the rainbow . The painting belongs to a group of motifs that shows an individual or a group of trees in the center of the picture, preferably oak. These include images such as autumn evening at the lake , winter , abbey in the oak forest , barrow in the snow or monastery ruins in the snow . A city silhouette, which closes the horizon in other paintings, is also built into the landscape of the village landscape.

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

  • Caspar David Friedrich: The Winter , 1808

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Abbey in the Eichwald , 1810

  • Caspar David Friedrich: megalithic grave in the snow , 1807

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Monastery ruins in the snow , 1818

Philatelic

On January 2, 2019, the first day of issue, Deutsche Post AG issued a postage stamp with the motif The lonely tree with a face value of 145 euro cents in the series Treasures from German Museums . The design comes from Stefan Klein and Olaf Neumann from Iserlohn .

literature

  • Helmut Börsch-Supan: Caspar David Friedrich . Prestel Verlag, Munich 1973
  • Hubertus Gaßner: For guidance . In: Caspar David Friedrich. The invention of modernity . Exhibition catalog Essen / Hamburg, 2006/2007
  • Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work . 2 vol., Munich 2011
  • Jens Christian Jensen: Caspar David Friedrich. Life and work. DuMont, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-7701-0758-6
  • Peter Märker: Caspar David Friedrich. History as nature. Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg 2007
  • Wieland Schmid: Caspar David Friedrich. Cycle, time, eternity. Prestel Verlag, Munich 1999
  • 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 2006

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan: Caspar David Friedrich. Prestel Verlag, Munich 1973, p. 130
  2. ^ Peter Märker: Caspar David Friedrich. History as nature . Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg 2007, p. 93
  3. ^ Scholl, Christian: Caspar David Friedrich und seine Zeit, EA Seemann Verlag, 2015, p. 50
  4. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan: Caspar David Friedrich. Prestel Verlag, Munich 1973, p. 130
  5. ↑ Hubertus Gaßner: For guidance. In: Caspar David Friedrich. The invention of modernity. Exhibition catalog Essen / Hamburg, 2006/2007, p. 287
  6. ^ Peter Märker: Caspar David Friedrich. History as nature. Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg 2007, p. 95
  7. ^ Wieland Schmid: Caspar David Friedrich. Cycle, time, eternity. Prestel Verlag, Munich 1999, p. 48
  8. ^ Jens Christian Jensen: Caspar David Friedrich. Life and work. DuMont, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-7701-0758-6 , p. 202
  9. ↑ Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrichs hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts . Greifswald 2014, pp. 59 f., 80, network-based P-Book
  10. ^ Wieland Schmid: Caspar David Friedrich. Cycle, time, eternity. Prestel Verlag, Munich 1999, p. 48
  11. ↑ Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrichs hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts . Greifswald 2014, p. 80, network-based P-Book
  12. ^ Gotthard Ludwig Kosegarten: Gedichte , CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013
  13. ^ Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart: Poems , CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013
  14. ↑ Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work . 2 vol., Munich 2011, p. 590 f.
  15. ↑ Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work . 2 vol., Munich 2011, p. 591 f.
  16. ↑ Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work . 2 vol., Munich 2011, p. 451
  17. ↑ Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work . 2 vol., Munich 2011, p. 570
  18. ↑ Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work . 2 vol., Munich 2011, p. 575
  19. ↑ Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work . 2 vol., Munich 2011, p. 567 f.
  20. ^ 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. 378
  21. ^ Herrmann Zschoche: Caspar David Friedrich. The letters . ConferencePoint Verlag, Hamburg 2006 p. 173
  22. ^ Ferdinand Laban in Die Kunst XIII, 1906, p. 294