Two men contemplating the moon
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| Two men contemplating the moon |
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| Caspar David Friedrich , 1819/20 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 33 × 44.5 cm |
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New Masters Gallery in the Albertinum State Art Collections Dresden |
Two Men Contemplating the Moon is a painting by Caspar David Friedrich . The picture in oil on canvas in the format 35 x 44 cm with its motif is the epitome of the romantic view of nature and identification image of German romanticism .
Several repetitions and copies were made of the painting. There is also the variant man and woman looking at the moon . It is very likely that the viewing of the moon in the Neue Meister gallery in Dresden is the original version.
Image description
motive
The painting shows two men on a mountain path that leads from the center of the picture to the top left. The stocky figure in front is clad in a gray-green cloak, wears the black barrett of the old German costume and holds a stick in his right hand. The rear figure rests with the right arm on the shoulder of the man next to him. In comparison, she is slimmer, wears a gray-green frock coat with a white collar protruding from it, and a black wreath hat of the early fraternities with a storm strap fastened under her chin. Both men, who are obviously very familiar with each other, look at the crescent of the waxing moon and the evening star in the sky, which is illuminated by the atrium of the stars.
An uprooted oak overgrown with moss that extends into the crown of a spruce at the top of the picture frames the scene. The oak is held in place by a weathered boulder. Another rock rises to the left. In the background, the terrain slopes down to a lower level, from which a forest is indicated by the pine tops. The foreground is dominated by the stump of a felled tree and a large, dry branch lying on the ground. A brown tint of the picture conveys the twilight of the evening.
“ Two men contemplating the moon. To the left on the rocky slope between mighty trees stand two men, almost seen from behind, absorbed in contemplation of the crescent moon, which floats in front of them in a brownish smell of mist. The one on the left puts his arm around the friend's shoulder. "
Painting style
The canvas was primed with chalk or plaster base. A second pigmented primer brings a light yellow or ocher tone. The painter then drew the lines of the representational with pencil and reed pen. The objects in the picture were then given concrete form with every very thinly applied colored glaze. Whereby the yellowish primer shows through even with dark objects. So the faint moonlight soaks the entire picture surface. The crescent moon was finally applied with opaque white and works effectively as a light source. With the colored, translucent Imprimatur, in which the light is reflected by the light primer, Friedrich is in the art-technological tradition of painters such as Anthonis van Dyck or Thomas Gainsborough .
Structure and aesthetics
In contrast to the other versions, in the Dresden picture the horizontal central axis of the picture and the right perpendicular of the golden section intersect in the luminous point of the evening star. The upper horizontal line of the golden section runs through the older man's eye. Werner Busch sees the origin and goals as well as the deeper meaning of the picture marked by the aesthetic system of measurements. The geometric figure of the picture appears here as a mediator. The transcendent experience of the two men or of man and woman is created through the aesthetic experience.
As in many of Friedrich's other pictures, the middle ground is missing. The accessible foreground is contrasted by the brightened background zone and thus the abyss in front of which the two men stand can be experienced. Due to the brownish glaze, the picture appears almost monochrome in a sepia light, only changing in brown and gray tones. The natural forms appear bizarre in the backlight of the moon.
Image interpretation
In art historical literature, four conflicting patterns of interpretation can be recognized: a nature-mystical and early romantic, a religious, a political and a biographical pattern of interpretation.
Nature and religion
The picture motif with its gentle melancholy mood is considered the epitome of the romantic view of nature. The two men in meditative posture while looking at the crescent moon and the evening star act as back figures in their mediating function as representatives of the viewer. The metaphorical structure of the picture is seen as a contemplative view without its object becoming clear and is therefore an offer of contemplation for the viewer.
Helmut Börsch-Supan advocates the juxtaposition of evergreen spruce and dead oak as symbols of a Christian or pagan conception of life that has been overcome, recognizes the path as the path of life and the waxing moon as Christ. Without a religious reference, the oak symbolizes history and transience, the evergreen fir the renewing power of nature. In the nature-mystical-early romantic interpretation there is a metaphysical tension between the accessible foreground and the infinite cosmos expanding in the background.
Demagogues
The political interpretation of the picture is based on the old German costume of the two men. In the year the picture was created, the Karlovy Vary resolutions were passed that led to the persecution of demagogues , in the course of which the attitudes of the "demagogues" were banned. The painter encouraged such a political interpretation. Karl Förster reported in his memoirs of a visit to the Dresden studio on April 9, 1820 about a remark by Friedrich when he showed him the picture Two men contemplating the moon : “'They are doing demagogic activities,' said Friedrich ironically, as if to explain . "
The remark “demagogic activities” is linked to Friedrich's numerous depictions of people in old German costumes and thus the painter's political intentions against the persecution of demagogues are assumed. However, the graphic templates for this clothing and most of the related images were created before the old German costume was banned by the Carlsbad resolutions in 1819.
Image staff and location
The identification of the image personnel can assist the interpretation of the image. Johan Christian Dahl transmits the version that the man on the left is August Heinrich , Friedrich's pupil from 1818 to 1820, and the one in the cloak is Christian Wilhelm Bommer, brother of Friedrich's wife Caroline . When dating to 1819, the young age of Heinrich (25) and Bommer (18) speaks against this variant. According to a message from Friedrich's friend Wilhelm Wegener, the painter is supposed to depict himself and his favorite pupil August Heinrich. In the woman / man combination, Friedrich's wife Caroline would be placed in place of Heinrich. According to the Neubrandenburg journalist Detlef Stapf, however, the gymnastics father Friedrich Ludwig Jahn and Pastor Franz Christian Boll (1776–1818) are shown. He takes the north-west bank of Lake Tollens as the location .
Max Semrau suspected Friedrich and his friend Benjamin Friedrich Gotthelf Kummer on a steep bank on Rügen . Max Sauerlandt located the pictorial landscape with the two men in the Harz Mountains .
Moon and star
Friedrich was a close observer of nature, but his paintings are not primarily about a lifelike representation. He recorded trees, landscapes and atmospheric phenomena in sketches, some are later brought together in one picture and composed in constructed contexts, following a picture idea. The focus of this painting is the moon. Its light shape is not the full moon, but a narrow sickle of the waxing moon. It is supplemented by rendering the earth's glow to form a round moon disk, surrounded by a courtyard . The moon is shown low above the horizon, the crescent moon clearly inclined. A view similar to the one shown would be most likely in spring in temperate northern latitudes during dusk between sunset and moonset, around the time of the equinox , in the first week after a new moon before Easter . However, the apparent brightness of the moon would not be sufficient to illuminate the surroundings in this way. A brightly shining star is shown next to the moon, also with a courtyard. For this, a constellation of Venus as an evening star at an angle of about 2 ° to the moon would be the closest equivalent.
If one tries, starting from the eye point of the two elevated observers or viewers, to understand their gaze on the basis of the indicated lines of sight, it appears that they run downwards and converge. This gives the impression that they are not looking up at the moon, but rather at it from their point of view as at an object floating in front of them not too far away. This image construction can be understood as an indication of the incompatibility between perception and the subject. Friedrich constructs a paradoxical situation here, which makes seeing itself the key to image interpretation. The natural metaphorical interpretation sees the moon as a symbol of the changing time and infinitely changing nature, here as a sign of consolation. In another reading, the moon stands as a symbol of an unattainable romantic longing.
An analyzing picture examination first examines the relation of central elements. In the painting “Two men contemplating the moon” the depicted relationship between the observer and the observed is central. There is a correspondence between the crescent moon and the two men looking at it. The younger man places his arm on the shoulder of the man who has been identified as an older man by a stick. Due to his noticeably curved posture, the pair of observers form a figuration on the left, the outline of which forms a semicircle on one side. To the right of this is a crescent moon, which is also bordered by a semicircle on the other side. With ashen moonlight it will be supplemented to the full circle of the Moon is a phenomenon that is often described by the phrase "the old moon in the arms of the young". The corresponding reference is underlined by the fact that the bright sickle finds an equivalent in the white flashing shirt collar.
Pictorial history
Sketches and studies
The tree sketch of the drawing Study of an Oak is used as a template for the oak standing at an angle in the picture ; Tree with roots from 25./26. Recognized April 1809. The boulder on the right could be taken from the barrow of the drawing Baum, Hünengrab, Turm from 26./27./29. May 1806.
Study of an oak; Tree with roots , 1809
Tree, barrow and tower , 1806
The couple in the picture man and woman contemplating the moon appear for the first time in a drawing with a view of Tarant Castle . An award in the collection of the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett shows the female figure and the man's shoulder area. Friedrich repeatedly uses pencil breaks when depicting people in traditional German costumes, which were created between 1815 and 1818.
Repeats and copies
According to the first owner of the presumed original version, Johan Christian Dahl , there are an indefinite number of repetitions or copies of the picture :
“Friedrich had to copy this picture several times and others also copied it because he didn't like doing the former; and only the more worthy destination for the Kgl. Gemäldegalerie could determine me to separate myself from the picture. "
Several copies have been preserved, but questions of dating and Friedrich's authorship could not be definitively determined. An exact overview of the completed work is currently not possible.
- There is broad consensus that the Dresden picture is the original version, although the subject has been controversial again since 1991.
- For the Dresden picture there is a repetition of Friedrich's hand in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York with the date 1825/30.
- A painting in the variant Man and Woman contemplating the moon (1830/35) is in the Old National Gallery in Berlin .
- A copy of the variant man and woman looking at the moon is in private ownership in Zurich .
In the discussion about the original version, the Dresden picture is favored because the painter achieved the highest degree of perfection in proportionality. The fact that the painter has stayed closer to his natural sketches also speaks in favor of the Dresden picture as the original version. In the Berlin picture he is more generous with natural truth. Otherwise several compositional details have been changed. So the right fir forest was raised higher into the picture, the dry branch is missing or the tree stump is not sawn off, but splintered. It seems decisive that the walking stick on which the older man is leaning is missing. In an infrared reflectography of the Berlin picture, however, you can see two vertical lines in the signature that indicate the stick. Friedrich therefore took over the stick when broadcasting the break and then did not take it out.
Kasper Monrad wants to see the variant Man and Woman contemplating the moon, dated 1830/34 due to the style of painting , as the first version of the theme, which should have been created as early as 1818. This thesis is based on a communication from the Danish writer Peder Hjort, who claims to have received such a picture from Friedrich in the spring of 1818.
Provenance
The Dresden painting Two Men Contemplating the Moon was in a moonlight landscape around 1830 . Two male figures look at the rising crescent moon in the painting collection of Johan Christian Dahl, who had received it from Friedrich in exchange for his own work. In 1840 Dahl sold the picture to the Royal Picture Gallery in Dresden for 80 thalers.
The Berlin picture man and woman contemplating the moon was in 1922 in the Dresden art dealer Salomon, exhibited in 1932 by Paul Cassirer in Berlin as a loan from the Lucerne collection Lulu Böhler and was acquired by the Alte Nationalgalerie in 1932 from the Fritz Nathan gallery (Lucerne).
Classification in the complete work
In the small format and the almost monochrome color perception, the picture has a unique position in Friedrich's work. In terms of motif, there is a preliminary work for the Two Men Contemplating the Moon in the painting Two Men by the Sea from 1817 and a continuation in the Moonrise by the Sea from 1821. The lunar landscape as an offer to the viewer for contemplation is consistently represented in the entire work.
Two men by the sea , 1817
Moonrise by the Sea , 1822
The crescent moon and evening star can also be found in the same constellation in a preliminary stage of the sky from the monk by the sea , in the cross in the painting The Cathedral from 1818 and in the painting Walk at Dusk from 1835.
The Monk by the Sea , 1810
The Cathedral ,
1818
Walk at Dusk , 1835
Friedrich's comment, “They are doing demagogic activities”, turns the painting into a documented image of political denomination alongside tombs of old heroes , the chasseur in the forest or Hutten's grave .
Tombs of ancient heroes , 1812
The Chasseur in the Woods , 1814
Hutten's grave ,
1823
reception
The Two Men Contemplating the Moon have already fascinated Friedrich's contemporaries and inspired other painters. To this day, the painting is regarded as a kind of identification image of German Romanticism and is used as a passe-partout symbol.
Effect in art
According to Friedrich, the two men contemplating the moon inspired all generations of artists to create moonlight pictures. But it was mostly the inimitable lighting effect of the painting and less the composition that inspired similar motifs. Works by Friedrich's friends Johann Christian Claussen Dahl with his Mondnacht of 1819 ( Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf) and Carl Gustav Carus , who created an enormous number of moonlight landscapes, had an immediate effect . In the 20th century, for example, it was Jack Butler Yeats who took up the motif again with the painting The two travelers (1952).
Carl Gustav Carus: Window at the Oybin in the moonlight , around 1825
Wilhelm Krause: Coastal Landscape by Moonlight , 1860
Jean-Francois Millet: Sheep Pen in the Moonlight , 1872
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literature
Harro Harring set a monument to Friedrich in his novel Rhongar Jarr from 1828 and tried a political interpretation of the picture:
“What has been foreign for centuries is coming to light again; the German has had a coat made like the one his fathers wore, and walks in this coat towards a future - which lies so wonderfully spread out before him, adorned with all the blessings of peace, rich in promises and rich in proud hopes! [...] Mysteriously rustling in the German oaks of wondrous things, of a vigorous time [...] "The morning is dawning!" The light of freedom dawns, and the spirit that lay sunk there stirs, bent under the yoke of the Servitude [...] It is the wind that blows through the crowns of the oaks. "
The picture is said to have inspired Samuel Beckett on his six-month trip to Germany for his play Warten auf Godot in 1936 , as he admitted 40 years later to the theater scholar Ruby Cohn: This was the source of Waiting for Godot, you know . The two characters in the painting turned into the vagabonds Vladimir and Tarragon on the theater stage. Beckett replaced Friedrich's invitation to the viewer to contemplate with a provocation that is not about the content of the expectation, but about the questionable nature of waiting.
The French author Cécile Wajsbrot chose the title Man and Woman contemplating the moon for her 2003 novel with a modern adapted Caspar David Friedrich theme .
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Postage stamps and other adaptations
On May 21, 1974, Deutsche Post of the GDR issued a block of stamps on the 200th birthday of Caspar David Friedrich with the motifs Two men contemplating the moon , The stages of life , The large enclosure near Dresden and a view of the Elbe Valley , including a first day cover. On August 16, 1974, the German Federal Post Office issued a stamp with the motif man and woman looking at the moon on the occasion of Caspar David Friedrich's 200th birthday .
Numerous record covers for compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann or Franz Liszt are designed with the image Two men contemplating the moon .
Exhibitions
In 2001, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York showed three versions of the motif in the exhibition Caspar David Friedrich: moonwatchers .
The painting Two Men Contemplating the Moon was a major work in the Dresden exhibition Constable, Delacroix, Friedrich, Goya. A shock for the senses in 2013, as well as the exhibition Dahl and Friedrich - Romantic Landscapes of the Nasjonalmuseet, Norway and the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden Albertinum from October 2015 to May 2015.
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
- Hilmar Frank: Prospects for the immeasurable. Perspectivity and open-mindedness with Caspar David Friedrich . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2004, p. 212
- Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work . 2 vol., Munich 2011
- Jens Christian Jensen: Caspar David Friedrich. Life and work . DuMont Verlag, Cologne 1999
- Kasper Monrad: Friedrich and Two Danish Moonwatchers . In: Cat. Caspar David Friedrich Moonwatchers . The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2001, pp. 23-29.
- 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
Web links
- Online Collection of the Dresden State Art Collections
- Old National Gallery Berlin
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 172
- ↑ Metropolitan Museum (English), accessed May 2, 2015
- ^ Catalog of the exhibition Caspar David Friedrich. Winter landscapes . Museum for Art and Cultural History of the City of Dortmund, Dortmund 1990, pp. 75–81
- ^ Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 185
- ↑ Werner Busch: To the understanding and interpretation of romantic art . In. Romance . Annweiler 1987, p. 48
- ^ Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 177
- ^ Carl Förster: Biographical and literary sketches from the life and time of Karl Förster . Dresden 1846, p. 157
- ↑ a b Letter from Johan Christian Dahl to the Royal Picture Gallery . Acta the royal. Painting gallery, 1840–1844, Cap. VII, No. 35, p. 66 f.
- ^ A b c 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. 356
- ↑ Detlef Stapf: Caspar David Friedrichs hidden landscapes. The Neubrandenburg contexts . Greifswald 2014, p. 152 ff., P-Book
- ^ Max Semrau: Caspar David Friedrich, the Greifswald painter. Pictures from Greifswald's past . Greifswald 1917, p. 19
- ↑ Reinhard Wegner: Art - the other nature (aesthetics around 1800) . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, p. 30f.
- ^ Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 176
- ↑ Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work . 2 vol., Munich 2011, p. 547
- ↑ Christina Grummt: Caspar David Friedrich. The painting. The entire work . 2 vol., Munich 2011, p. 465
- ^ Werner Sumowski: Caspar David Friedrich studies . Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 1970, plate 135, no.394
- ↑ a b Birgit Verwiebe: Caspar David Friedrich - The Watzmann. SMB DuMont, Cologne 2004, p. 111
- ^ Marianne Bernhard (ed.): Caspar David Friedrich. The entire graphic work. Munich 1974, pp. 646-649, 666-669
- ^ Catalog exhibition Caspar David Friedrich. Winter landscapes . Museum for Art and Cultural History of the City of Dortmund, Dortmund 1990, pp. 49, 51, 57, 75, 77 f., 80 f., No. 36–38
- ↑ Kasper Monrad: Friedrich and Two Danish Moonwatchers . In: Cat. Caspar David Friedrich Moonwatchers. The Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York 2001, pp. 23-29.
- ^ Werner Busch: Caspar David Friedrich. Aesthetics and Religion . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 179
- ↑ According to Kasper Monrad, the inspiration for the motif is said to have come from Peder Hjort (1793–1871). The Danish author, critic and friend of the artist stayed in Dresden in the autumn of 1817 and claims to have told Friedrich about an evening mood under moonlight that he experienced together with his fiancée. According to this story, the picture Man and Woman contemplating the moon was created and was brought to Copenhagen as a gift from the painter in the spring of 1818. See Kasper Monrad: Friedrich and Two Danish Moonwatchers . In: Cat. Caspar David Friedrich Moonwatchers. The Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York 2001, pp. 23-29
- ^ 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. 433
- ^ 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. 435
- ↑ Harro Harring: Rhonghar Jarr. Trips by a Frisian in Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Holland, France, Greece, Italy and Switzerland . 3rd vol., Munich 1828, vol. 1, p. 193
- ↑ James Knowlson: Damned to Fame. The Life of Samual Beckett . London 1996, pp. 254, 378, 609
- ↑ Hilmar Frank: Prospects into the immeasurable. Perspectivity and open-mindedness with Caspar David Friedrich . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2004, p. 212
- ↑ Cécile Wajsbrot: Man and woman looking at the moon . Liebeskind Verlagbuchhandlung, Munich 2003
- ^ Sabine Rewald: Caspar David Friedrich: Moonwatchers (Metropolitan Museum of Art) . Yale University Press, New York 2002
- ^ Nasjonalmuseet, Norway
- ^ Dresden State Art Collections