Mountain landscape with rainbow

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Mountain landscape with rainbow (Caspar David Friedrich)
Mountain landscape with rainbow
Caspar David Friedrich , 1810
Oil on canvas
70 × 102 cm
Folkwang Museum , Essen

Mountain landscape with rainbow is a painting by Caspar David Friedrich from around 1809 . The painting in oil on canvas in the format 70 cm × 102 cm is in the Museum Folkwang , Essen .

Image description

The painting shows in the foreground a hiker on a grassy mountain plateau, who is leaning against a rock that has tilted to one side, leaning on a stick and putting down his top hat. He is conspicuously dressed in white trousers and a red shirt and appears as a strong contrast in front of the brown-gray tint of the picture. In the historical context, clothing is that of a city dweller. The mountain clearing is framed by deciduous trees or bushes that slope towards the center. The hiker looks into an incalculable gorge, the bottom of which seems covered by fog. The mountains rising to the left and right are overgrown with fir forests. In the depth of the middle distance, a low mountain range with a central high mountain cone is staggered silhouetted, in the nocturnal darkness without any recognizable interior drawing. The sky is covered by thick, gloomy clouds. Through a gap in the cloud, the moon shines barely noticeably with a silver light. A bright rainbow in gray and yellow stretches over the mountain cone.

Image and nature

Růžovský vrch (Rosenberg), seen from Noldenberg

The picture is composed as a fantasy place. Nevertheless, the picture elements can be assigned to different landscapes from different times through the drawings used. The high mountain in the background is the 619 meter high Rosenberg with an almost circular cone shape in Bohemian Switzerland as seen from the Kanapee viewpoint above the Prebischtor , which was drawn on a hike in 1808. Friedrich also used this mountain in the painting The Wanderer above the Sea of ​​Fog . The origins of the bushes on the left and right are unknown, despite existing drawings. The rock on which the hiker is leaning is said to be a stone from the barrows of the Krappmühle near Neubrandenburg , shown on a drawing that no longer exists.

Structure and aesthetics

The landscape is captured from an overstretched perspective. The scheme of symmetrical composition seems to follow mathematical rules. The summit of the high mountain in the middle of the picture lies at the intersection of the picture diagonals. The wavy horizon line divides the picture in proportion to the golden ratio . The curvature of the rainbow is answered by an implied line course in the lower part of the picture, so that the foreground, middle and background are encompassed by an ellipsoid shape. Approximately on the central axis are the top of the highest mountain and the figure of the hiker, which are therefore both related to each other. The direction of the hiker's gaze removes the spatial discontinuity of the picture and creates the relationship between near and far, although the gorge can be seen as a space barrier. The composition is laid out in the three-bar horizontal striped spaces typical of Friedrich's painting, a structure that is significant for the iconization of the landscape. With his face turned away , the wanderer appears as a figure from behind , which reinforces the spatiality of the picture.

Image interpretation

Apparently, in the painting, similar to the monk by the sea , which was created around the same time , a lonely person is confronted with overwhelming nature. With this description, the essential similarities in the different interpretations are exhausted.

Religious symbol

In the interpretation as a personal religious creed ( Helmut Börsch-Supan ) the hiker leans on the boulder as a symbol of the belief that the high mountain in its abstractness is a god symbol behind the valley of death, which the hiker has to cross in order to reach his goal To get there. The removed hat is seen as a gesture of humility. The rainbow arches over it as a sign of peace. Karl-Ludwig Hoch considers Friedrich's mountain depiction to be a kind of successor to the mountain faith, especially because the painter brings a familiar mountain range from the Dresden area into the picture. The dominance of the high mountain and the depth of the valley are symbols of the ups and downs of life.

Motif pairs

Caspar David Friedrich: Landscape with a lake, (Bohemian landscape), 1810

Hubertus Gaßner largely reduces the image idea to a technical experiment in which an attempt is made to unite day and night as poles and opposites in a single image, as the painter later realizes by means of different lighting in his transparencies. In this paradoxical construction, the moon behind the clouds illuminates the night lighting in the background and an invisible sun illuminates the foreground. Helmut Börsch-Supan then only recognizes the evening of a pair of images in the mountainous landscape with a rainbow , to which the landscape with the lake belongs as morning. Peter Märker also finds historically intended layers of meaning for this pair of images. In the evening picture these are the juxtaposition of the present and the future, the mountains as a symbol of both past medieval and future Christianity.

Time of day and rainbow

In addition to the date, the time of day shown is the main topic of discussion. A nocturnal landscape is usually preferred. The natural phenomenon in the painting already irritated Friedrich's contemporaries, such as the Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg , who spoke of a rainbow that looked “like a pastry chef's work”. Heinz Köhn first recognized a lunar rainbow in 1931 and is often quoted as a result to this day. In other interpretations, this rainbow is created by "the low sun in front of a black stormy sky". Helmut Börsch-Supan explains the inconsistency in the lighting conditions with the fact that the picture was designed as a night picture and then symbolically enriched with a rainbow, as an expression of the reconciliation of man with God. In the unreal staging, Wieland Schmied suspects the hour between day and night when the moon can be sensed behind the clouds, but late sunlight reaches the hiker. The message of the picture is: even in the middle of life, death is by our side, only one step away from us.

theology

God's blessings on Noah and his sons; the rainbow as a sign of the covenant ( Gen 9,1–17  EU )

If the rainbow is seen here not as a natural phenomenon but as a religious symbol, the question of theological interpretation arises. Just as Friedrich arranged the high mountain in the distance, as in the painting Cross with Rainbow (1816), the reference to God is probably meant, in the Old Testament sense the mountain as a place of encounter with God. According to the painter's statements about the rainbow, he apparently refers to the Old Testament, Genesis 9 EU , in which the rainbow is a sign of the covenant that God made with Noah and men, as a sign of peace between man and God .

“It is true that the good Lord lets his sun shine on just and unjust and stretches the bow of grace over the whole earth; but if the Mahler wants to represent a rainbow, and moreover, in the case of the imperfections he has means to be able to do so, he must also stretch this heavenly appearance over a landscape worthy of the sublime object, and not, as XXX here, let it appear over a few well-known beer bars. It should by no means be said here: that it absolutely has to be a very special area, for example a large Schweitzerpartie or the unrestricted sea, but a mere cornfield would suffice or some other simple but only worthy object. "

- Caspar David Friedrich

Image of abandonment

Caspar David Friedrich: Catharina Dorothea Sponholz, around 1798

The figure in the foreground was recognized early on as a self-portrait of the painter. The painter is identified by his round head and blond hair. This view has remained unchallenged to this day. Detlef Stapf interprets the picture from the biographical situation in 1809. On December 22, 1808, the painter's most important person, his sister Dorothea, died in Breesen. After the early death of her mother in Greifswald, she was a substitute mother for the adolescent Caspar David and the later family of the pastor's wife. The painting illustrates the feeling of abandonment and loneliness against the backdrop of death. Friedrich uses the rainbow as a symbol in memory pictures. With the rock on which the hiker is leaning, a stone from the barrows of the Krappmühle on the way between Neubrandenburg and Breesen is said to have been taken into the picture, which was an important landmark for the painter. In the interpretation, the focus is also on the eye-catching suit of the man. Friedrich always dressed in a dark cloth. The colors red and white, which in the painter's color symbolism stand for passion and purity, can be interpreted in Caspar David Friedrich's psychopathography as an expression of the oedipal conflict.

Philosophical interpretation

Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling

Otto von Simson's approach to interpretation refers to the composition of the “threshold” and tries to clarify the depicted “threshold” experience with the terms of Martin Heidegger's existential ontology . As with the monk by the sea, humans are infinitely small in the immensity of the cosmos, exposed to the forces of nature on a narrow threshold of their earthly existence.

“The characteristic of the existentially designed actual being to death can be summarized as follows: The running reveals the being lost in the one-self and brings it before the possibility of being itself, primarily unsupported by caring care, but itself in the passionate, free from the illusions of the man, factual, self-conscious and fearful freedom to death. "

- Martin Heidegger

In his examination of the mountain landscape with rainbow, Joseph Leo Koerner refers to Schelling's philosophy , according to which the dichotomy between the subject and the human object is overcome in the work of art. With reference to the geometric arrangement of the picture, the structural symmetry of the rainbow can be assigned to the idealization of the subject-object dualism of human experience. With the figure on the back as the artist's self-portrait, the entire nature represented appears as an image of the artist's inner experience of the self and the world.

Suggestion

Karl Ludwig Hoch thinks it is possible that Friedrich's portrayal of the night scene could have been thematically influenced by popular contemporary literature. The artist 's novel Franz Sternbald's Wanderings by Ludwig Tieck , the essay Views from the Night Side of Natural Science by Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert and the cycle of poems Hymnen an die Nacht von Novalis would come into question .

  • Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert

  • Ludwig Tieck

  • Novalis

Sketches

For the high mountain in the background, the painter used the pencil drawing Landscape Studies from 9/12. May 1808, the fourth study from above. The view from the Kanapee viewpoint above the Prebischtor to the nearby Rosenberg is localized here . The right bush is from the drawing group of young trees from May 27, 1807, and the left bush is from drawing trees, group of trees and house with crossed gable beams from 25/27. Taken May 1807. Both drawings belong to the Oslo sketchbook from 1807, which is still completely preserved. The self-portrait of the painter is said to have been created with the help of Georg Friedrich Kersting .

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Landscape Studies, 1808

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Trees, Trees and House with Crossed Gable Beams, 1807

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Group of Young Trees, 1807

Provenance

The picture was probably acquired in 1810 by the Weimar Duke Karl August together with the landscape with a rainbow through the mediation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . It was still to be found in the inventory of the Weimar art collections in 1924 . After the First World War , the Council of People's Deputies and the Revolutionary Government sold the painting. From 1932 it was with the Berlin gallery owner Paul Cassirer ; In the exhibition catalog of the Cassirer Gallery the dimensions are given as 69 x 88 cm because a 14 cm wide strip was turned over on the left. From 1939 it was in the Essen collection of the Jewish banker Georg Hirschland . In 1939 the mountain landscape with a rainbow was forcibly transferred from the "Hirschland Collection" to the Folkwang Museum in Essen. In 1945 the painting was returned to the previous owner and in 1948 it was bequeathed to the Folkwang Museum by Georg Hirschland.

Dating

The dating of the painting is controversial in art historical literature. The date of origin 1809, first suggested by Kurt Karl Eberlein in 1940, prevailed. Helmut Börsch-Supan was initially in front of the Tetschen Altar for a date of 1808, but then decided on completion in 1810 in the catalog raisonné. Isolated positions are those of Werner R. Deusch with the information about 1825 and that of Sigrid Hinz with 1835.

Natural phenomenon rainbow

Drawing by Descartes to explain the formation of the rainbow

The natural phenomenon of the rainbow in Friedrich's picture was discussed from a scientific point of view. The position of the sun in relation to the viewer is relevant for the composition of the image. That should shine in the back of the hiker, because the observer of the rainbow is in the tip of the assumed cone, the axis of which leads from the sun through the observer to the opposite point of the sun. This means that it is impossible for the sun to be behind the clouds. The interpretation of the rainbow shown as a lunar rainbow, which usually appears white due to its weakness of light, requires strong moonlight. When the air is clear and the moon is full, the rainbow colors can become visible. However, a lunar rainbow would require the hiker to look in a different direction if the light appearance is to be in a meaningful relationship to the picture.

Classification in the complete work

Caspar David Friedrich: Landscape (Rügen) with a rainbow , 1810, has been considered lost since 1945, most recently the Klassik Stiftung Weimar in the Schwarzburg castle relocation site

The painting was created close to the sea ​​beach with the fisherman and the monk by the sea , and also takes up the motif of a relatively small figure from behind in front of the overwhelming nature. It is Friedrich's first figure from behind, with an in-depth look function. Another parallel is offered by the interpretation of an abyss of death, which thematically can also be assigned to the woodcut The Woman with the Raven on the Abyss, which goes back to a drawing from 1801. The mountain landscape with rainbow belongs to a group of works in which a rainbow is symbolically used as a symbol of the reconciliation of man with God and as a bridge from the earthly to the unearthly. These include the Landscape with a Rainbow (1810), the lost painting My Burial (1803), the Cross in Front of a Rainbow in the Mountains (1816) and The Cathedral (1818).

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Woman with Raven on the Abyss, 1803

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Sea Beach with Fisherman, 1807

  • Caspar David Friedrich: The monk by the sea, 1808-1810

  • Caspar David Friedrich: Cross with Rainbow, 1816

  • Caspar David Friedrich: The Cathedral, 1818

reception

A section of the painting is used for the book cover for the non-fiction book Romantik. A German affair used by Rüdiger Safranski . The text of the book makes no reference to a mountain landscape with a rainbow, uses the image as an iconization of romanticism as the epitome of the German spirit. In 2013, Thomas Schultz-Overhage used Franz Sternbald's Wanderings in the cover design of Ludwig Tie's edition . An old German story by the Hofenberg publishing house, an illustration of the mountain landscape with a rainbow.

Baroque emblem

With the mountain landscape with rainbow, Friedrich is clearly in the baroque emblem tradition. In terms of design, the picture is comparable to the illustration Iris / the rainbow by Jan Luikens in Johann Christoph Weigel's emblem book Ethica Naturalis from 1700. The rainbow over a mythological landscape can also be found in Peter Paul Rubens ' painting Juno and Argus (around 1610 ) or in the picture Seelenfischer (1614) by Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne . In Romanticism, Friedrich is not alone with his motif. In 1805 the Nazarene Joseph Anton Koch painted his heroic landscape with a rainbow and the landscape with Noah's sacrifice of thanks, Karl Friedrich Schinkel painted the medieval city on the river in 1815 . The use of the rainbow in romantic art was also influenced by the theory of colors by Goethe and Philipp Otto Runge .

  • Peter Paul Rubens: Juno and Argus, around 1610

  • Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne: Fishing for the Soul, 1614

  • Jan Luikens, Christoph Weigel: Iris / Rainbow, copper engraving, 1700

  • Joseph Anton Koch: Landscape with Noah's Thanksgiving Offering, 1803

  • Joseph Anton Koch: Heroic Landscape with a Rainbow, 1805

  • Karl Friedrich Schinkel Medieval City on the River, 1815

literature

  • Helmut Börsch-Supan: Caspar David Friedrich. Prestel Verlag, Munich 1973.
  • Caspar David Friedrich: Comments when looking at a collection of paintings by mostly still living and recently deceased artists. Edited by Gerhard Eimer , Frankfurt 1999.
  • Hubertus Gaßner: Composition, hyperbolas, symmetries and grid structures, rhythmic sequences, image pairs and series. 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.
  • Sigrid Hinz: Caspar David Friedrich as a draftsman. Diss., Greifswald 1966.
  • Karl-Ludwig Hoch: Caspar David Friedrich and the Bohemian Mountains. Dresden 1987.
  • Werner Hofmann: Caspar David Friedrich. Natural reality and art truth. CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46475-0 .
  • Joseph Leo Koerner: Caspar David Friedrich. Landscape and subject. Munich 1998 (first English 1990).
  • Heinz Köhn: German Romanticism in the Folkwang Museum. In: Pantheon VII, 1931.
  • Peter Märker: Caspar David Friedrich. History and nature. Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg 2007.
  • Wieland Schmied: Caspar David Friedrich. Cycle, time and eternity. Prestel Verlag, Munich 1999.
  • Otto von Simson: The look inside. CD Friedrich, Spitzweg, L. Richter, Leibl. Berlin 1986.
  • Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrich's hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts. Greifswald 2014, network-based P-Book .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrichs hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts. Greifswald 2014, p. 72, network-based P-Book.
  2. ^ Peter Märker: Caspar David Friedrich. History and nature. Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg 2007, p. 111.
  3. ^ Werner Hofmann: Caspar David Friedrich. Natural reality and art truth. CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46475-0 , p. 154.
  4. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan: Caspar David Friedrich. Prestel Verlag, Munich 1973, p. 88.
  5. ^ Karl-Ludwig Hoch: Caspar David Friedrich and the Bohemian mountains. Dresden 1987, p. 82.
  6. ↑ Hubertus Gaßner: Composition, hyperbolas, symmetries and grid structures, rhythmic sequences, image pairs and series. In: Caspar David Friedrich: The Invention of Modernity. Exhibition catalog Essen / Hamburg, 2006/2007, p. 279 ff.
  7. ^ 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. 309.
  8. ^ Peter Märker: Caspar David Friedrich. History and nature. Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg 2007, p. 112.
  9. ^ Sigrid Hinz: Caspar David Friedrich as a draftsman. Diss., Greifswald 1966, p. 90.
  10. ^ Heinz Köhn: German Romanticism in the Folkwang Museum. In: Pantheon VII, 1931, p. 112.
  11. ^ K. Köhn: Museum reports, Folkwang Museum Essen. Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch XII / XIII (1943), p. 328 f.
  12. ^ 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. 309.
  13. ^ Wieland Schmied: Caspar David Friedrich. Cycle, time and eternity. Prestel Verlag, Munich 1999, p. 7.
  14. ↑ Caspar David Friedrich: Comments when viewing a collection of paintings by mostly still living and recently deceased artists. Ed. V. Gerhard Eimer, Frankfurt 1999, p. 78.
  15. ^ Herbert von Eine: Caspar David Friedrich. Berlin 1938.
  16. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan: Caspar David Friedrich. Feeling as law . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 2008, p. 120.
  17. ↑ Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrichs hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts. Greifswald 2014, p. 71 ff., Network-based P-Book.
  18. ↑ Otto von Simson: The view inside. CD Friedrich, Spitzweg, L. Richter, W. Leibl. Berlin 1986, p. 17.
  19. ↑ Martin Heidegger: Being and time, ("The basic state of fear as an excellent development of existence"). In: Otto von Simson: The view inside. CD Friedrich, Spitzweg, L. Richter, W. Leibl. Berlin 1986, p. 22.
  20. ^ Joseph Leo Koerner: Caspar David Friedrich. Landscape and subject. Munich 1998 (first English 1990), p. 125 f.
  21. ^ Karl-Ludwig Hoch: Caspar David Friedrich and the Bohemian mountains. Dresden 1987, p. 83.
  22. ^ Alfred Anger (Ed.): Ludwig Tieck: Franz Sternbalds Wanderings. Study edition. Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-15-008715-5 .
  23. ^ Gotthilf Heinrich Von Schubert: Views from the night side of natural science. Ulan Press, 2012.
  24. ↑ Novalis: Hymns to the Night. Hymns, songs and other poems. Anaconda Verlag, 2006.
  25. ↑ Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work . 2 vol., Munich 2011, p. 533
  26. ^ Karl-Ludwig Hoch: Caspar David Friedrich and the Bohemian Mountains. Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1987, p. 78.
  27. ↑ Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work. 2 vol., Munich 2011, p. 522.
  28. ↑ Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work. 2 vol., Munich 2011, p. 521 f.
  29. ^ Kurt Karl Eberlein: Caspar David Friedrich the landscape painter. A folk book of German art. Bielefeld Leipzig (Velhagen & Klasing), 1940, p. 21.
  30. ^ 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. 308.
  31. ^ Kurt Karl Eberlein: Caspar David Friedrich the landscape painter. A folk book of German art. Bielefeld-Leipzig 1940, p. 68.
  32. ↑ Helmut Börsch-Supan: The figure in Caspar David Friedrich. Munich 1960, p. 84.
  33. ^ 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. 183.
  34. ^ Werner R. Deusch: Painting of the German Romantics and their contemporaries. Berlin 1937, p. 22.
  35. ^ Sigrid Hinz: Caspar David Friedrich as a draftsman. A contribution to the stylistic development and its dating of the paintings. Diss. Greifswald, 1966, p. 90.
  36. ↑ http://www.lostart.de/DE/Verlust/3387
  37. ^ Rüdiger Safranski: Romanticism. A German affair. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2007.