sabine rewald, caspar david friedrich's window

Caspar David Friedrich's 'Window with a View': A Mystery SolvedAuthor(s): Sabine RewaldSource: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 134, No. 1070 (May, 1992), pp. 299-304Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/885241 .Accessed: 27/12/2013 08:38

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SABINE REWALD

Caspar David Friedrich's 'Window with a view': a mystery solved*

18. Window with a view of a park, by Caspar David Friedrich. Here dated 1836-37. Pencil and sepia, 39.8 by 30.5 cm.

(State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg).

'I'HE location of the scene portrayed in Caspar David Friedrich's sepia drawing, Window with a view of a park in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Fig.18),' has always been a puzzle, as has the drawing's date.2 It shows several large trees, among them a couple of tall

*I wish to thank Marict Vil(c k, Associate Curator in charge of the Catalogue Departmenllt athe Metropolitan Museum, New York, who translated many letters into and from Czech and gave generously of her help and time. 'l'his drawing wais one of twenty works (nine paintings and eleven drawings)

from the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, and the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, that made up the first Friedrich exhibition in the United States, The Romantic Vision qf (Caspar David Friedrich: Paintings and Drawings from the U.S.S.R., showii at the Art Institute of Chlicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 1990/91. 'The works in Russia form the only major collection of the

paintelr's wvoik oirtsi(dc (;c(rman. 'I hev were (c(quired du iring the artist's lifetime Ity the Russian imperial family.

poplars, crowding the view seen through the closed window. To the left is glimpsed a two-storied building, while a smaller house with a high tiled roof appears on the right.

It has been suggested that Friedrich might have executed the drawing in 1806-11 as part of a now lost group showing

2Helmut Borsch-Supan proposes an early date, relating its meticulous style to the artist's precise studies of nature of 1806-11 (see H. BORS(:H-SUPAN land K.W.

JAHNIG: Caspar David Friedrich: Gemalde, Druckgraphik und bildmidssige Zeichnungen, Munich [1973], no.174, p.306). ''he alternative theory that it dates from 1835- 37, as do all the other sepia drawings Friedrich sent to Russia is given further

weight by the fact that Friedrich again painted window views after his stroke in 1835 (see w. SUMOWSKI: Caspar )avid Friedrich-Studien, Wiesbaden [1970], p.147, and Caspar David Friedrich 1774-1840, exh.cat., Kunsthalle, Hamburg [19741, p.301, no.223.

299


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FRIEDRICH'S 'WINDOW WITH A VIEW'

9. ViewJrom the artist's studio, window on the left, by uaspar Uavla r r nedricn. (.1806. Pencil and sepia, 31 by 24 cm. (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).

views from his apartments in Dresden and the neighbouring town of Loschwitz,3 but the type of window shown does not correspond to those found there.4 Other hypotheses, such as that it might show the Friedrich family's house at Greifswald have foundered for similar reasons. The present writer's recent (and, alas, rash) proposal that the window might be one of those at the Weinberg, the property of Friedrich's friend and neighbour at Loschwitz, Gerhard von Kugelgen, has also collapsed in the light of facts learned on a recent visit there: the house itself was destroyed during the second world war, but the grounds do not match those shown in Friedrich's drawing.5 Other candidates, such as the house (complete with pavilion) in Dresden where the painter Ludwig Richter was born,6 and certain buildings in the park of Putbus castle on the island of Riigen,7 can equally be ruled out.

3JOHANNA SCHOPENHAUER (1766-1838), mother of the philosopher Arthur

Schopenhauer, described such a group of sepia drawings but specified that they were 'small views' ('Obe(r Gerhard von Kiigelgen und Friedrich in Dresden. Zwei Briefi, mitgeteilt von (iner Kunstfreundin', Journal des Luxus und der Moden

[1810], pp.660-63; reprinted in BORSCH-SUPAN and JAHNIG, op.cit. at note 2 above, p.78). 4'1'he window's shape does not match those in the Dresden apartment where Friedrich lived until 1820, which arc known from his earlier views of c. 1806; nor does it match the window of the apartment where he lived after 1820, known from his painting Woman at the window of 1822 in the Nationalgalerie Berlin. T'he window of his 1803 summer quarters at Loschwitz must have been small and modest, for he described the place as being part of a farmhouse complete with chickens, pigeons, and a watchdog. Sec K.-L. HO;H, ed.: Caspar David Friedrich- unhekannie Dokumente seines Lebens, Dresden [1985], p.23.

20. Viewjrom the artist's studio, window on the right, by Uaspar Uavid rledrlch. c. 1806. Pencil and sepia, 31 by 24 cm. (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).

It has even been suggested that the composition is of Friedrich's own invention. He is known to have added or deleted elements to or from actual views; but it seems unlikely that he would have invented a view such as that in the Hermitage drawing which, with its special and distinctive mood, has a close rapport with his two views from his studio in Dresden of about 1806 (Figs. 19 and 20). As the reclusive Friedrich was never accustomed to stay in other peoples' houses, much less paint there, the window is most likely to belong to a place where the artist is known to have sojourned for a period of time. One such place is Teplitz, Bohemia's oldest spa, an idyllic town thirty-five miles south of Dresden, which was more popular even than Carlsbad during Friedrich's lifetime and attracted many artists, among them Tieck, Goethe, Carus, Beethoven, Chopin and Wagner.

5See s. REWALD, ed.: The Romantic Vision of Caspar David Friedrich: Paintings and

Drawingsfrom the U.S.S.R., exh.cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

[1991], p.44. On my visit to Loschwitz, I learned that no trees grew there

during the early years of the nineteenth century and that the entire area was then flat and cultivated with vineyards. 'rees began to grow only after the

vineyards were destroyed by a blight in the early 1880s.

6Karl-Ludwig Hoch kindly suggested in a letter dated 2nd August 1991 that the architecture of the two-storied building in Friedrich's drawing points to

Dresden, and enclosed a reproduction of Ludwig Richter's birthplace in Dresden- Friedrichstadt. Despite striking similarities and the presenc: e of a pavilion, the

necessary third building, that from which Friedrich drew the other two, is

missing. 7Werner Sumowski informs me that the Putbus Castle (burned down in 1860, subsequently reconstructed, and finally torn down in 1945) did not match the

buildings in Friedrich's drawing.

30()



FRIEDRICH S 'WINDOW WITH A VIEW'

23.

21. View of the eastern part of the Clary-Aldringen Palace in 'I'cplitz with enlarged staircase and the court chapel in the background. Photograph.

22. View of the eastern part of the Clary-Aldringen Palace in Teplitz, by H. Williard after Eugen Miller, showing from left to right: the Orangerie, Gardener's House with Aviary and the Kolostuj 'owers. Mid-nineteenth century. Coloured lithograph, 16 by 18.7 cm. (Krajski Museum, Teplitz).

23. View of the northern facade of the Gardener's House of the Clary-Aldringen Palace in Teplitz. Photograph.

Friedrich went to Teplitz for a few days on a sketching trip in early May 1828 and stayed, together with the Russian engraver August Clara, at the Topferschank, an inn that Goethe and Ludwig Tieck had also visited.8 After his stroke in June 1835 he spent six weeks during August and September recuperating in the town. Ac- companied by his wife and three children, on that occasion he rented quarters at the Goldene Harfe, an inn at No. 75 Badegasse.9 As this inn, now called the Zlata harfa, still exists at the same address, I sent a photograph of Fried- rich's drawing to the Krajske Museum, the town's municipal museum, asking whether either or both of the buildings shown in the drawing could be seen from any of its windows. Jitha Budinska, the museum's topographical his- torian, promptly replied that the Zlata harfa faced no

"See o(:CH, op.cii. at note 4 ablove, pp. 11 3- 1 6. 'Ibid., ). 1 30, where it is mentiioned that the inn is still in business today. "'I'his was c(ifirmcd b)y Karl-l,udwig Hoc(h, to whom I had written at the Sil' tin c'.

park: its front windows look onto the rear of the Municipal- and Sofien-Baths and the town church, while the rear windows overlook roofs.'0 She was, however, able to identify the buildings in Friedrich's drawing as belonging to the eastern part of the eighteenth-century Clary-Aldringen Palace,"' that on the right being a two-towered late six- teenth-century gazebo known as the Kolostuj Towers, and the other the so-called Gardener's House, a Neo- classical edifice built between 1806 and 1808 for the palace gardener. She also pointed out that Friedrich would have had a view of these buildings during his later visits to

Teplitz, in May 1836 and June 1837, when he can be shown to have rented rooms at the Bergstein, a guest house situated at 262 Kirchengasse, which stands directly opposite and only some five hundred feet away from this

'Although dating from the renaissance, the palace was remodelled in the Neo- classical style about 1800 by the D)resden architect Johalnn August (iesel (1751- 1822), who also laid mut the ga r(lcn aIs ian English palrk.

301

21

22



FRIEDRICH S 'WINDOW WITH A VIEW'

- tElB ? 26. 26. View ofno.262 Kirchengasse, Teplitz.

24. The Kolostuj Towers, c. 1930. Photograph.

25. Original window from an unrenovated room at no.262 Kirchengassc, 24. Teplitz.

portion of the palace. 12 The Bergstein still exists, though now overgrown by foliage, and partly converted into in- dividual apartments.

As Mrs Budinska had never previously heard of Friedrich, she looked up his name in the register of the Teplitz guest and bath lists for the 1830s, a copy of which is kept at the museum and found a record of the artist's visits to the spa: the last, in 1837, has not hitherto been known. Sub- sequently she kindly sent a reproduction of a mid-nineteenth-century engraving showing the site as it appeared during Friedrich's visit as well as recent photographs taken by the museum's photographer (Figs.21-26).

Friedrich usually composed his landscape paintings in

.......... his studio following precise studies drawn from nature. 4 ......Because he modified and simplified his motifs so much

~:(d4w~ goften using certain of them more than once or in different

L'.':|:'':~:/>~.'~ 5 -:. ?1$ combinations it is usually impossible to identify for certain the actual places on which they are based. These photographs of a single motif therefore give an unprecedented insight into his working methods. In this particular case, they show that he eliminated elements that would clutter the composition. He omitted the staircase -- the so-called

'2HOCH, op.cit. at note 4 above, mentions Friedrich's visit to 'l'eplitz in 1836 and lists his address as 'Kirchengasse zum B(rgstein Nr. 262', but without indicating that the building still exists. 'lhe Bergstein was riot an inn but a private house that rented rooms to tourists. In a guidebook of 1821 (Beschreibung von Teplitz und seiner malerischen Umgebung, 'I'cplitz [ 1821]), Mrs Budinska found a reltrenee to the Bergstein describing it as having five guest rooms and one storage room

25. for rent to spa guests.

302




28. Window in Bad Nenndorf, byJohann Gottfried Schadow. 1827. Pencil and black crayon, 20.4 by 28.2 cm. (Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Musecn, Berlin).

27. View of Pillnitz Castle, byJohann Christian Dahl. 1823. 70 by 45.5 cm. (Museum Folkwang, Essen).

Bird-Stairs (Fig.22) now much enlarged (Fig.2 1) - leading up to both buildings and filled the intervening space with more trees, though retaining the original poplars. He also deleted the baroque aviary in front of the Gardener's House, adding two louvred windows instead.'3 On the other hand, the accuracy with which he transcribed the buildings' architectural details can be judged from the close-up photograph (Fig.23) taken with a telephoto lens from the room in the second floor of the guest house (Fig.26) which Friedrich most probably occupied.14 Of the Kolostuj Towers (Fig.24) on the right he showed only a sliver (much reduced in scale), thus giving it the look of a small garden pavilion.

Although the window in the second floor room of the Bergstein has been replaced by a modern one, one of the building's original windows remains in an unrenovated room (Fig.25). Laced with cobwebs today, it looks like an

'3Mrs Budinska tells me that these two windows actually exist, but are further to the left, out of sight. Friedrich pulled them into view, further to the right. The baroque aviary and the Neo-classical Gardener's House, which was built later, interconnected. Today the Gardener's House is a cafe, while the main part of the Clary-Aldringen Palace houses the Krajske Museum, along with Mrs Budinska's office. '4Although it is impossible to be certain which rooms Friedrich occupied, Mrs Budinska suggests that the drawing must have been done from one of the rooms on the second floor where the vista (Fig.23) matches that of Friedrich's drawing. Apparently the views from the windows on the first floor are completely obstructed by shrubs and trees. '5It is worth considering whether the St Petersburg drawing may perhaps be the late window view, cited as lost in the Friedrich literature, that was purchased by the Saxon Art Association in 1837, was won in the Association's annual lottery by a Mr Gregor of Herrenhut (see SUMOWSKI, op.cit. at note 2 above

element from the setting of an E.T.A. Hoffmann story. The lack of a handle on the window shown in the drawing has been interpreted in the Friedrich literature as having a deep symbolic meaning, but this detail is in fact rooted in reality: tiny metal latches, hardly perceptible, function as the only opening device on the surviving window. In keeping with the severe straight lines of the composition, however, Friedrich replaced the gently curved upper frame with a thin horizontal bar intimating that the window continues above the drawing's upper edge, beyond the

eight panes shown in full. With the drawing's date established as 1836-37, it would

now appear to be Friedrich's last surviving window view - though whether it was one of several, or one of a pair is

impossible to determine'5 - and as such invites comparison with his two early views of about 1806 (Figs. 19 and 20). These show the Elbe River as seen from his two studio

pp.147 and 237) and must be identical with one recorded in the Association's winter exhibition of 1837 (HOCH, op.cit. at note 4 above, p.124). Professor Hoch tells me he thinks it not impossible that this work, after having been in Gregor's possession, may have reached St Petersburg in a roundabout manner. On the other hand, Friedrich may well have drawn two or more late window views. As many of his works are lost, our knowledge of his euvre can be based only on those that survived. At the Dresden Academy Exhbition in 1837 Friedrich showed three sepia drawings (cat.nos.121-23), whose titles and subjects are unknown (SUMOWSKI, p.237). The St Petersburg drawing - perhaps a pendant to the one which Gregor was awarded - may have been among those exhibited and then returned to the artist's studio from where the poet Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky (1783-1852) bought works directly for the Czar. Zhukovsky noted in his diary on 20th March 1840: 'Selected drawings by Friedrich for the Czar'; cited by SUMOWSKI, p.238.

303




29. The day, by Odilon Redon, plate from the portfolio Dreams, 1891-92. Lithograph, 21 by 15.5 cm. (Museum of Modern Art, New York).

windows in Dresden, with boats passing by and light and life flooding in through the open casements. Small objects on the wall - scissors or callipers- hint at the metier of an artist then entering the zenith of his career. In both, the large open window is the sole motif, to the exclusion of any figures. The evocative power of this image, novel at the time,16 was widely copied by Friedrich's followers, who were to turn it into a stock item of Romantic art. Mingling the far and the near, and raising a longing in the viewer to explore the distant landscape, these open- window views seem to embody, as Lorenz Eitner has noted, the words of the poet Novalis (1772-1801): 'Every- thing at a distance turns poetic: distant mountains, distant

people, distant events: all become romantic.' 17 It was the more frontal of Friedrich's two views (Fig.20)

that his followers chiefly emulated. They tended to give the landscape so much prominence that the flanking walls are often reduced to frame-sized strips turning these views into pictures within pictures- as occurs, for example, in the View of Pillnitz Castle of 1823 (Fig.27) by Friedrich's friend Johann Christian Dahl. No other painter achieved the haunting effect of Friedrich's view, in which light and shade, or rather the spaces of the open window and that of the slightly wider enclosing walls, are held in a finely tuned balance.

'Hercrules Seghers must be credited with depicting the first figureless window view, in an etching completed by 1623 (14 by 17.8 cm.) (illustrated in L. COLLINS: Hercules Seghers, Chicago [1953], pl.66.

71L. EITNER: "'he Open Window and the Storm-Tossed Boat: An Essay in the

I(onlography of Romanticism', Art Bulletin, LXXIX [1955] p.286.

304

This balance is also to be found in the late view at Teplitz, which is also the first occasion in which Friedrich shows a closed window. Perhaps not surprisingly, none of his followers, Romantic or otherwise, copied this particular device, possibly because closed windows are not conducive to the depiction of landscapes or distant prospects. There is, however, a curious half-precedent in a drawing of 1827 of a half-closed window, executed by the sculptorJohann Goffried Schadow while taking a cure at the spa at Bad Nenndorf (Fig.28). Schadow was sixty-three years old at the time, about the same age as Friedrich when he drew his view through a completely closed window (Fig.18) while taking the waters at Teplitz.

After Friedrich's stroke in 1835, from which he never recovered, he again fell severely ill in 1836, and in 1837 his left side became paralysed. This forced a change in his work and working habits, obliging him to give up painting in oil and to return to sepia and water-colour, which he had used before he began working in oil in 1807.18 Physi- cally frail and much diminished, he could no longer roam the countryside in search of motifs and now composed his landscapes largely from earlier studies done after nature. As an invalid, he depicted nature cultivated, as can be seen in his many views of graveyards or, as here, of trees and houses in a park.

The closed window in the Teplitz drawing is, no doubt, a subtle allusion to the painter's illness-induced separation from the outside world. Other elements, too, point dis- creetly to his sense of isolation. If the earlier works showed distant views, here the scene is obstructed by large trees and two potted tropical plants, a large Dieffenbachia and a small Peperomia. Although the pots sit on the outer sill for practical purposes- these windows open inwards their placement accentuates the room's bareness which evokes a corridor, a cell, or a sickroom. Nature is seen as if from behind bars.

In this late view through a closed window, Friedrich brings to a poignant coda a Romantic motif on which he had embarked thirty years earlier. The closed window view, with its potential to convey different meanings, also found favour among much later artists. It appealed to the Symbolist poets and painters, who would invest it with symbolic qualities, as did Odilon Redon in his lithograph The day of 1891 (Fig.29) from his album Dreams. Ifa mood of melancholy hangs imperceptibly over Friedrich's closed window - which Redon could not have known - a sense of

claustrophobia marks the French artist's visionary work. Here the window with its thin bars appears that of a prison of eternal night, impervious to the milky light of day- break outside. In the twentieth century the window motif changed even further. While Surrealists such as Magritte in his trompe I'oail views played around with it, Modernists such as Delaunay suspended its function altogether, showing interior and exterior together, as in his various Simul- taneous Windows of 1912. Thence it was but a short step from the window - crossed by bars - to the abstract grid.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, .New York

'8Friedrich loved symmetry in his work. Was he aware of the curious symmetry in the chronology of his window views? 'he early views, his first, were done about a year before he began working in oil in 1807. 1 he late view (or views), his last, was (or were) done about one year after he gave up working in oil in c.1835.



Article Contentsp.299p.300p.301p.302p.303p.304

Issue Table of ContentsThe Burlington Magazine, Vol. 134, No. 1070 (May, 1992), pp. i-xxxi+285-346Front Matter [pp.i-xxxi]EditorialThe Rembrandt Re-Trial [p.285]

Rembrandt's 'Alexander the Great' [pp.286-298]Caspar David Friedrich's 'Window with a View': A Mystery Solved [pp.299-304]Shorter NoticesAlonso Snchez Coello and Cardinal Alessandro Farnese [pp.305-308]Giovan-Antonio Burrini's 'Flaying of Marsyas' in Turin [pp.309-310]

LettersAnother Pentimento in Constable's 'Leaping Horse' [p.311]Greuze's Portrait of Sir Robert Strange [p.311]

Book Reviewsuntitled [p.312]untitled [pp.312-314]untitled [pp.314-315]untitled [p.315]untitled [pp.315-316]untitled [p.316]untitled [pp.316-317]

Publications Receiveduntitled [p.317]untitled [p.317]untitled [p.317]

Exhibition ReviewsMantegna. London and New York [pp.318-321]Brice Marden. Prints 1961-1991. London, Tate Gallery [pp.321-322]British Water-Colours. London and Birmingham [pp.322-324]International Festival of Expressionism. Manchester [pp.324-325]Bonington. Paris, Petit Palais [pp.325-327]Theodoor van Thulden. 's-Hertogenbosch and Strasbourg [pp.327-330]Nicholas Lancret. Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum [pp.330-332]Alma-Tadema. Baltimore and Cincinnati [pp.332-333]Flix Vallotton. New Haven and Indianapolis [pp.333-335]Robert Rauschenberg: The Early 1950s. San Francisco, MoMA [pp.335-336]

Calendar [pp.337-341]Acquisitions of Old-Master Paintings in the Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1988-1991: Supplement [pp.342-346]Back Matter

sabine rewald, caspar david friedrich's window

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