Art History Today

Baltic Light: Art in Germany & Scandinavia. Slides

Slides.

1. Caspar David Friedrich, Woman before the Rising Sun (Woman before the Setting Sun), 1818-20, oil on canvas, 22×30 cm, Museum Folkwang, Essen.

2. Caspar David Friedrich, Self-Portrait, 1800, Black chalk, 420×276 mm, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.

3. Caspar David Friedrich, Landscape with a Rainbow, 1809-10, oil on canvas, 70 cm × 102 cm, Museum Folkwang, Essen.

4. Philipp Otto Runge, The Small Morning and details, 1809-10, oil on canvas, 152×113 cm, Kunsthalle, Hamburg.

5. Philipp Otto Runge, The Hülsenbeck Children, 1805-06, oil on canvas, 131.5×143.5 cm, Kunsthalle, Hamburg.

6. Johan Christian Clausen Dahl, Cloud Study with Horizon, 1832, oil on board, 25×28 cm, Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

7. Map of Scandinavia.

8. Johan Tobias Sergel, Bust of Sophia Magdalena of Denmark (1746-1813), Queen consort of Sweden, 1783, marble, location unknown.

9. Johan Christian Clausen Dahl, View of Dresden at Full Moon, 1839, oil on canvas, 78×130 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden.

10. Edvard Munch, Vampire II, 1895-1902, lithograph, woodcut, Art Market, London, 2018.

11. Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait with Cigarette, 1895, oil on canvas, 110.5×85.5 cm, National Gallery, Oslo.

12. August Strindberg, Storm in the Skerries. "The Flying Dutchman", 1892, wax colour on cardboard, 62×98 cm, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.

13. Richard Bergh, Portrait of August Strindberg, 1905, oil on canvas, 104 × 93 cm, Bonnier collection of portraits, Nedre Manilla, Djurgården, Stockholm.

14. Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Lake Keitele, 1905, oil on canvas, 53×66 cm, National Gallery, London.

15. Niis Kreuger, October Evening by Apelvik, 1894, oil on canvas, 77×101 cm, Peter and Renate Nahum, London.

16. Alfred Wahlberg, View near Vaxholm, 1872, oil on canvas, 71×110 cm, National Museum, Stockholm.

17. Carl Frederik Hill, Sister Anna, 1877, oil on canvas, 103×65 cm, National Museum, Stockholm.

18. Anders Zorn, Impression de Londres, 1890, watercolour, 72.3×55 cm, Art Museum, Göteborg.

19. Hugo Birger, Scandinavian Artists’ Lunch at Cafe Ledoyen, Paris, 1886, 183.5×261.5 cm, Art Museum, Göteborg.

20. Bertha Wegmann, The Artist Jeanna Bauck, 1881, oil on canvas, 106×85 cm, National Museum, Stockholm.

21. Photograph of Bertha Wegmann, before 1891.

22. Agnes Slott-Moller, The Dying Betrothed, 1906, oil on canvas, 81×133.5 cm, Collection Wolfgang Joop.

23. Albert Edelfelt, Conveying the Child’s Coffin, 1879, oil on canvas, 120×204 cm, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki.

24. Albert Edelfelt, Summer Evening at Hammar’s Repair Yard, 1885, oil on canvas, 93.4×135.2 cm, Art Museum, Copenhagen.

25. Christian Krogh, Portrait of Karl Nordström, oil on canvas, 61.5×46.5, National Gallery, Oslo.

26. Gustave Caillebotte, Man on a Balcony: Boulevard Hausmann, 1882, oil on canvas, 117×90 cm, Private Collection, Switzerland.

27. Christian Krogh, Look ahead. The Harbour at Bergen, 1884, oil on canvas, 63×86 cm, National Gallery, Oslo.

28. Gustave Caillebotte, The Oarsmen, (Canotiers), 1877, oil on canvas, 81×116 cm, Private Collection.

29. Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Boy with a Crow, 1884, oil on canvas, 86.5×72.5 cm, Atenum Taidemuseo, Helsinki.

30. Harald Sohlberg, Summer Night, 1899, oil on canvas, 114.0×135.5 cm, National Gallery, Oslo.

31. Harald Sohlberg, Finnish Elegy, 1895, tempera on canvas, 72×60 cm, Private Collection.

32. Prins Fugen The Forest, 1892, oil on canvas, 150.0×100.5 cm, Art Museum, Göteborg.

33. Eugene Jansson, Dawn over Riddarfjarden, 1899, oil on canvas, 150×201 cm, Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm.

34. Asgrimur Jonsson, Mount Tindafjoll, 1903-1904, oil on canvas, 80×125.5 cm, National Gallery of Iceland.

35. Thorarinn B. Thorlaksson, Thingvellir, 1900, oil on canvas, 57.5×81.5 cm, National Gallery of Iceland.

36. Christian Krohg, The Net Mender, 1879, oil on canvas, 93.5×66.5 cm, National Gallery, Oslo.

37. Wilhelm Leibl, Three Women in the Church, 1878-82, tempera on mahogany, 113×77 cm, Kunsthalle, Hamburg.

38. Viggo Johansen, Near Skagen Østerby after a Storm, 1885, oil on canvas, 95×147 cm, Skagens Museum, Skagen.

39. P.S. Kroyer, The Artist’s Luncheon, 1883, oil on canvas, 82.0×61.0, Skagens Museum.

40. P.S. Kroyer, Hip, hip, hurrah! 1888, oil on canvas, 134.5 × 165.5 cm, oil on canvas, Gothenberg Museum of Art.

41. Michael Ancher, Will He Round the Point?, 1885, oil on canvas, Skagens Museum.

42. Walter Langley, Between the Tides, 1901, oil on canvas, 40 x 60 cm, location unknown.

43. Laurits Regner Tuxen, Christian IX of Denmark with His Large Family, 1883-86, oil on canvas, 500×700 cm, Amalienborg Museum, Copenhagen.

44. Anna Ancher, Harvest Time, 1901, oil on canvas, 63×82 cm, Art Museum, Fuglsang, Samling, Copenhagen.

45. H. A. Brendekilde, Worn Out, 1889, oil on canvas, 207 x 270 cm, Odense City Museums.

46. Jules Bastian-Lepage, Haymaking, 1877, oil on canvas, 180×195 cm, Private collection.

47. Harald Slott-Moller, The Poor, The Waiting Room of Death, 1888, oil on canvas, 131×184.5 cm, State Museum, Copenhagen.

48. Hugo Simberg, Death and the Peasant at the Gates of Heaven and Hell, 1897, watercolour, 12.5×18 cm, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki.

49. Interior of the Ancher’s Home, Skagen.

50. P. S. Kroyer, Summer Evening at the South Beach, Skagen, Anna Ancher and Marie Kroyer, 1893, oil on canvas, Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen.

51. P. S. Kroyer, Bathing Children, 1892, oil on canvas, 33 x 41 cm, Den Hirschsprungske, Stockholm.

52. Niels Bjerre, The Prayer Meeting, Harboore (The Children of God), 1897, oil on canvas, 82.0×106.5 cm, Art Museum, Aarhus.

53. Christen Dalsgaard, Mormons Visit a Country Carpenter, 1856, oil on canvas, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.

54. Venny Soldan-Brofeldt, The Pietists, 1898, oil on canvas, 87×113 cm, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki.

55. Vilhelm Hammershoi, Five Portraits, 1901, oil on canvas, 190.0 x 300.0, Thielska Gallerit, Stockholm.

56. Caspar David Friedrich, Woman at a Window, 1822, oil on canvas, 44×37 cm, Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

57. Wilhelm Bendz, The Waagepetersen Family, 1830, oil on canvas, 100×89 cm, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.

58. Anne Ancher, Sunlight in the Blue Room. Helga Ancher Knitting in her Grandmother's Room, 1891, oil on canvas, 65 x 59 cm, Skagens Museum, Skagen.

59. Anna Sophie Petersen, An Evening with Friends, by Lamplight, 1891, oil on canvas, 102×130 cm, Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen.

60. Richard Berg, Nordic Summer Evening, 1899-1900, oil on canvas, 170.0×223.5 cm, Art Museum, Göteborg.

61. Edvard Munch, Summer Night’s Dream (The Voice), 1893, oil on canvas, 96.0×118.5 cm, Munch Museum, Oslo.

62. Elin Danielson- Gamboghi, After Breakfast, 1890, oil on canvas, 67×94 cm, Private Collection.

63. Elin Danielson- Gambogi, Self-Portrait, 1900, oil on canvas, 96×65.5 cm, Ateneum Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki.

64. Antonio Vinciguerra, Gamboghi Memorial in Livorno, 2004.

65. Vilhelm Hammershøi, Interior with Young Man Reading, 1898, oil on canvas, 64.4 × 51.8 cm, Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen.

66. Vilhelm Hammershøi, Woman in Danish Interior, oil on canvas 57 by 49cm, Art Market, Copenhagen.

Baltic Light: Art in Germany & Scandinavia. 8

Scandinavian Interiors.

In Scandinavian painting, the genre of the interior is distinctive because of the unusual seasonal variation: there are a few hours dusk in winter and endless days in the summer; the Nordic summer explains the use of flooded light in homes whilst the winter shows these scenes as representations of the safe home against the cold, hostile exterior.¹ In Sweden and Denmark, the genre begins with artists like Hilstrom and Bendz; but we must remember that Friedrich studied in Copenhagen, and that he invented a dynamic between outside and inside in his art which must have had some influence in later Scandinavian artists like Richard Bergh (1858-1919) who stressed it was essential for the Swedish school to find their own aesthetic, rather than simply imitate the colours of the French, or the classical styles of Italy and Greece. Though many Nordic interior scenes show women, none of these can qualify as the femme fatale figure, so beloved of Pre-Raphaelite and Symbolist painting; the exception is Munch who is closer to the Pre-Raphaelites with his doomy feminine figures lurking in highly coloured rooms. Munch wanted no scenes of people sitting, reading, or women knitting; “there should be pictures of real people who breathed, suffered, felt, loved.”² These images of women in Nordic homes reflect the puritanical and patriarchal society in the region; but some of these Ibsenian doll- houses would eventually collapse, since trying to contain the woman in a domestic interior would inevitably lead to conflict, as suggested in his famous plays. Still, many Scandinavian women artists gave up painting after marrying; but a good example of the exception is the aforementioned Elin Danielson who went to Paris, and eventually married an Italian painter in 1898 called Raphael Gambogi, one of the Macchiaoli. Elin’s After Breakfast shows something of this feminine independence as she paints a woman indolently smoking a cigarette, instead of keeping the doll’s- house in order. There are also some paintings of women and men contained in rooms, usually with some artistic connection apparent. The best of these are by Hammershoi (above) who shows the influence of Friedrich, and even earlier, Johannes Vermeer on his distinctive blending of tradition and modernity. Munch would not have approved!

1Nils Olhsen, “Womens’ Rooms: An Aspect of Nordic Interior Painting, Nordic Art: The Modern Breakthrough 1860-1920, 217-223, 218.

2Ibid, 223.

Baltic Light: Art in Germany & Scandinavia. 7

Painters, Skagen & Scandinavian Peasants.

Why did the successful- and not so accomplished- members of the Nordic school decide to return to their homelands? The short answer is that they wanted to put their individual countries on the political and cultural map. There had already been artistic communities set up in the homelands; the most famous was that of the Skagen painters. Established in the 1870s, this location, at the top of Denmark, offered artists the opportunity to work en plein air in imitation of the French Impressionists who had started in the previous decade. Among the group were Anna and Michael Ancher, Peder Severin Krøyer, Holger Drachmann, Karl Madsen, Laurits Tuxen, Marie Krøyer, Carl Locher, Viggo Johansen and Thorvald Niss from Denmark, Oscar Björck and Johan Krouthén from Sweden, and Christian Krohg and Eilif Peterssen from Norway. The group gathered together regularly at the Brøndums Inn. For most of these predominantly wealthy artists, fishermen were the main subject, like Kroger’s The Net Mender. Some of these paintings fall into the category of what could be loosely labelled “social realism,” though without the authoritarian overtones of Stalinist art. In fact, most portray a simple, slow way of life amongst these Danish villagers; no indication of progress is visible. Other painters took a more critical view of peasant life as in Brenderkilde’s condemnatory Worn Out which shows an exhausted old peasant killed by his hard labour; or the Dane Harald Slott-Muller’s The Poor: The Waiting Room of Death which is a critique of poverty in Copenhagen. Artists had been visiting Skagen since 1833, and even classical artists from the Academies were encouraged to paint there; but this trend was countered by Michael Ancher, Karl Madsen and Viggo Johansen who in the early 1870s were studying at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen. Ancher became engaged to Anna Brøndum in 1878 and married her in 1880. Their home then became an important meeting place for artists, especially after King Christian IX purchased Ancher's painting, Will He Round the Point? based on some local narrative. Other paintings of peasant life outside Skagen could be called genre; the group portraits of religious communities convey an austere, resigned attitude to their harsh lot. The best of these is the Dane Niels Bjerre’s The Prayer Meeting, Harboore (The Children of God, above) which is greatly influenced by Dutch group portraits, though its psychological intensity and pictorial austerity seems more appropriate for an isolated Nordic village community.

Baltic Light: Art in Germany & Scandinavia. 6

Painting the Scandinavian Landscape.

A key aspect of “Nordic-ness” is the love affair that artists had with the geography and customs of their homelands. Born at a time when the movement known as European Symbolism was thriving, Scandinavian landscape art borrowed much from the more established movement; this resulted in views of mysterious and strange features of nature. The art of the Swedish painter Prins Eugen (1865-1947) typify this style; his architectural forms demonstrate compositional balance while the grey and blue colours enhance the eeriness of the scene. This is eastern Sweden functioning as a symbol of the “power of primeval nature” a “vital source of Nordic identity.”¹ The Nordic summer night was a constant source of inspiration as in the work of the Norwegian artist Harald Sohlberg (1869-1935) which has a dream-like quality which has been compared with his more famous countryman Edvard Munch (1863-1944), especially the latter’s Summer Night’s Dream (the Voice) which has a young woman posing against an abstract interior background.² The Finnish artist Ellen Thesleff (1869-1954) who studied in Paris varied her ouput between portraits and small landscapes of natural features in her homeland. Other landscape artists like the Fin Albert Edelfelt (1854-1905) tried to suggest the antiquity and customs buried in the Scandinavian countryside as in his depiction of the Viapori Fortress in Helsinki; or as in the glassy lava plain of Thingvellir, painted by one of Iceland’s first contemporary artists Thorarinn B. Thorlaksson (1867-1924) who delicately blends symbolist moods with naturalistic observation (above).

1Ibid. no. 13.

2Ibid, nos 81 and 66

Baltic Light: Art in Germany & Scandinavia. 5

Scandinavian Art & the French Art World.

The links between Scandinavian painters and the French art world in nineteenth-century Paris should also be noted, since there was a “mass migration as artists fled abroad in lieu of a proper training base.”¹ Only Sweden and Denmark possessed academies, but these were intrinsically conservative which led to revolts and independent exhibitions competing with the art establishment, rather as the French Impressionists had done in 1863.² Though Nordic artists studied in German cities like Düsseldorf and Munich, after the Franco-Prussian War of of 1870-1871, these cities gradually lost status.³ On Christmas Eve of 1877, the Swedish painter Carl Larsson rented a room in his favourite restaurant in Paris, in order to celebrate the festive season with a party of his Swedish and Finnish friends. Something of this kind of occasion amongst the Scandinavian painters in Paris in caught in pictures like Hugo Birger’ s Scandinavian Artists’ Lunch at Cafe Ledoyen, Paris (1866, above). Far from home the northerners railed together and saw themselves as forging a new international force, which maintained contact with the Nordic homelands.⁴ For example, the fishing village of Skagen on the northern tip of Jutland in Denmark seems quite a long way from Paris; but the community featured a number of Scandinavian painters who exhibited in Paris. We can also see the influence of major French impressionists and realists like Gustave Caillebotte and Jules Bastien-Lepage appear in the art of the Norwegian Christian Krohg (1852-1925) who studied in Germany and visited Skagen in the 1870s and 1880s; or Gallen-Kallela who went to Paris in 1884, and studied there until 1890.⁵ Scandinavian art communities were also established outside Paris, on the Brittany coastline where could be found a colony of artists from Finland and Sweden.

1Ibid, 12.

2Per Hedstrom, “Internationalism and Nationalism: Nordic Painters on the European Stage” in Nordic Art, 187-197.

3Ibid, 188.

4Salme Sarajas- Korte, “The Scandinavian Artists’ Colony in France” in ibid, 60-66. 60.

5Krogh’s portrait of Karl Nordstrom seems to be based on Caillebotte’s Man on a Balcony of 1880, Gustave Caillebotte: The Unknown Impressionist, (R.A., London, 1996), no. 17 and fig 3.

Baltic Light: Art in Germany & Scandinavia. 4

Nordic Art & the Modern Breakthrough

The Nordic Breakthrough (in Danish Det Moderne Gennebrud) is defined by David Jackson as “the strong movement of naturalism and debating literature of Scandinavia near the end of the 19^th century which replaced romanticism.”¹ It is named after the Danish historian Georg Brandes (1842-1927) whose book, Men of the Modern Breakthrough put in theoretical format the principles of Realism and Naturalism. Writing in 2012, Jackson pointed out that today most of Nordic art remains unknown to the “wider European public” with the exception of the Norwegian Edvard Munch whose art, especially The Scream, remains fixed firmly in the public mind and popular culture.² In literature, the governing name is August Stringberg (1849-1912), who also painted. And then there is the art of another painter, the Dane, Vilhem Hammershoi (1864-1914) who has become more well-known recently. Added to that is the Finnish artist Akel Gallen Kallela (1865-1931), one of whose landscapes was bought by the London National Gallery in 1999 (above). Despite the local occurrence of schools in Scandinavia, there were two major trends detectable in the North's art. Two main periods of change can be identified. Firstly, around 1880, the “relative isolation of Scandinavian art” (Varnedoe) is broken by the influx of major styles of Europe; these include Modern European Realism and Naturalism, inclinations already anticipated in the theatre and literature of Ibsen and Strindberg. This meant a new repertoire of images appearing in Scandinavian paintings: representations of the working class, images of modern life, and plein-air landscape. The second major change occurred in Scandinavian art when the internationalism of the 1880s movement was replaced by one in the 1890s: “nationalist, isolationist sentiment” (Varnedoe) brought painters back to their homelands; they turned to native Nordic themes and relinquished the French realism of their earlier work. Thus in brief stylistic terms, we have a period of Internationalism and Realism followed by a decade of Nationalism and Symbolism. Yet, the picture of the Nordic art world in relation to Paris is more complicated than one might expect. Compare the modernity of Hammershoi’s interiors with the lesser-known art of the Danish woman Agnes Slott-Moller who mines more traditional styles such as medieval art and Pre-Raphaelite painting.³

1David Jackson “Nordic Art. The Modern Breakthrough” in Nordic Art: The Modern Breakthrough 1860-1920, (Hirmer, 2012), 11.

2Ibid.

3As Jackson says (15), the exclusion of Nordic painters from the canons of art history indicate that “there are always a multiplicity of art histories awaiting analysis.” And he notes that Brandes 1883 book Men of the Modern Breakthrough eliminated in its title the role of women in the Nordic breakthrough, a criminal omission as, for example, 50 % of Finnish artists were women.

Baltic Light: Art in Germany & Scandinavia. 3

What is Nordic Art?

Friedrich and Runge both trained in Copenhagen, and as we shall see later, some of Friedrich’s scenes of inner rooms influenced the Nordic school of painting. Nordic refers to the five Scandinavian nations ( Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden). If we except Iceland for the moment, that leaves two interconnected pairs of countries in Scandinavia: Denmark and Sweden; Norway and Finland. Both Denmark and Sweden had flourishing traditions of visual art springing from the great sea of the European enlightenment.¹ Sweden had strong links with France, and its art had made an international grade with the work of the sculptor Johan Tobias Sergel (1740-184). By contrast, Denmark had strong ties- both culturally and geographically- to Germany; but the era of neo-classism pioneered by Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844) was succeeded by the age of Danish Biedermier Naturalist Painting in the 1830s and 1840s. Unlike either Denmark or Sweden’s close ties with the European mainland, both Norway and Finland remained detached from those European traditions. But we can certainly see a link between the Norwegian romantic landscapist Johan Christian Dahl (above, 1788-1857) and Friedrich’s art, But in the early 1880s, Norway began to forge a new national identity due to its “spectacular topography, its peasant life, and Viking history.”² Finland also had nationalistic urges; like Norway, Finland was hostile to Sweden and wanted independence from it, though Finland had been conceded to Russia in 1809. Despite not being ruled by Sweden, the “Finnish renaissance” of the 1890s was as much anti-Swedish as against Russia with the country’s spectacular “wilderness [its] heroic mythology and folk style” celebrated through its art.³

1The following introduction relies on Kirk Varnedoe, “Nationalism, Internationalism, and the Progress of Scandinavian Art” in Northern Light: Realism and Symbolism in Scandinavia Painting 1880-1910, (Brooklyn Museum, New York, 1982), 12-36. 12.

2Ibid.

3Ibid.

Baltic Light: Art in Germany & Scandinavia. 2

Romanticism & the Child in Nature

In his De Rerum Natura, the ancient writer Lucretius states the child “lies naked upon the ground, speechless, in need of every vital support, as soon as nature has split him forth with throes from his mother’s womb into the regions of light”¹ This description closely fits the allegorical painting The Small Morning (1809-10) by Runge which shows a bared, vulnerable child exposed to the dawn light who in the picture is symbolised by the goddess Aurora. Runge was obsessed with images of childhood; in addition to the eight canvases that form this series, a few years previously he painted The Hülsenbeck Children (above) who are shown next to three sunflowers, thus emphasising their link with the natural world. The child has long been a symbol of romanticism, and not just within the German Romantic Movement but all over Europe. Wordsworth’s previously mentioned poem “The Rainbow” contains the line “The Child is the father of the Man.” Why this fascination with the concept of the child in early nineteenth century art, poetry and natural science? Though it is known how images of children in the form of the classical “putto” appeared in the renaissance and baroque periods, the subject of the origins of childhood iconography in the romantic period has only been investigated by a few specialists in German romantic poetry like M.H. Abrams, a specialist in romantic poetry. To him the state of childhood in romantic culture should not be viewed as a regressive condition, or even a return to the state of infantilism; as he observes, the playwright Schiller argued that the child “describes not only what we have been, but also anticipates where we are going” which matches Wordsworth’s idea of extending childhood into adulthood and reversing the relationship of parent and offspring.² Novalis himself spoke of a “spiral return” which he equated with the condition of the child which grows with the unfolding of nature, which may explain why Runge compares The Hülsenbeck Children to flowers acted on by the sun.³ Different stages of childhood here correspond to the various rates of growth of phototropic plants and flowers. This link between infant minds and the phototropic nature of plants is found in Wordsworth, thus further confirming a connection between concepts in Germanic art and the English nature poets.⁴

1 Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Bk V, 222.

2 M.H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, (Norton, 1973), 380.

3 Ibid, 183-187 for the “romantic spiral.”

4 Wordsworth, The Prelude Bk V, 350-3: “To manage books, and things and make them act on infant minds as surely as the sun/ Deals with a Flower.”

Baltic Light: Art in Germany & Scandinavia. 1

Intimations of Immortality in German Landscape.

The German literary romantics comprised a group of individuals, men like Ludwig Tieck, the Schlegel Brothers, and Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, better known as “Novalis.” One of their governing ideas was that God was the author of two books- the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature which could be read- to the initiated- as easily as the Holy Bible.¹These individuals were known to Friedrich; his art cannot be appreciated without understanding the ideas these men held about art and nature. The influence of the German nature poets and natural scientists was not confined to Germany however, but was felt by English counterparts such as Coleridge and Wordsworth. Often, Friedrich’s paintings appear upon the covers of books of romantic poets like Wordsworth’s “The Prelude” which is one of the most famous sustained meditations on mental growth and emotional response in the presence of nature. One could imagine Friedrich’s Landscape with Rainbow as the perfect visual equivalent of Wordsworth’s lines in the poem “The Rainbow,” - “My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky,”² and as Joseph Koerner says, Wordsworth and Friedrich seem to be intellectually and aesthetically compatible since he connects Wordsworth’s intimations of immortality vouchsafed to the weary traveller through the landscape poems such as “An Evening Walk” (1793), episodes in “The Prelude” 1799, 1805, 1850), and “The Excursion” (1814) with the rückenfigur principle: the figure seen from the back in Friedrich’s art.

1 In the words of Schlegel in 1798: “For my own part, the goal of my literary projects is to write a new Bible, and to wander in the footprints of Mohammed and Luther.” Cited in Joseph Koerner, Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape, (Reaktion Books, 2009), 31.

2 My heart leaps up when I behold/A rainbow in the sky:/So was it when my life began;/So is it now I am a man; /So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die!/The Child is the father of the Man; /And I could wish my days to be/Bound each to each by natural piety.”

The Romantic Artist & Society: Romanticism & Realism in the 19th Century. Slides

Slides.

1. William Blake, Frontispiece to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790-93.

2. Pierre Joseph Prudhon, Les Amours de Phrosine et Mélidore, 1797, etching and engaving.

3. Silvestro Valeri, Portrait of Henri Marie Beyle (Stendhal) as Consul, Museé Stendhal, Grenoble, oil on canvas, early 19th century.

4. Jacques Louis David, The Intervention of the Sabine Women, 1799, oil on canvas, 385×522 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

5. Antoine- Jean Gros, Napoleon on the Battlefield of Eylau, 1808, oil on canvas, 521×784 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

6. Vicente López, The Painter Francisco de Goya, 1826, Oil on canvas, 93×75 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

7. Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, The Dream/Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, Plate 43, Los Caprichos, 1799, etching and aquatint, Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington, Indiana.

8. Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, The Madhouse, 1812-1814, Museo de la Real Academia de San Fernando, Madrid.

9. Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, The Third of May 1808, 1814, oil on canvas, 266×345 cm, Prado, Madrid.

10. Detail.

11. Caspar David Friedrich, The Chasseur in the Forest, 1814, oil on canvas, 66×47 cm, Private collection.

12. Theodore Gericault, The Wounded Officer of the Imperial Guard Leaving the Battlefield, 1814, oil on canvas, 358×294 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

13. Theodore Gericault, Portrait of a Kleptomaniac, c. 1820, oil on canvas, 61,2×50,2 cm, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent.

14. Theodore Gericault, Study of Feet and Hands, 1818-19, oil on canvas, 52×64 cm, Musée Fabre, Montpellier.

15. Theodore, Gericault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1818-19, oil on canvas, 491×716 cm, Museé du Louvre, Paris.

16. Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (28th July 1830), 1830, Oil on canvas, 260×325 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

17. Eugène Delacroix, Attila the Hun trampling on Italy and the Arts, lunette, Chamber of Deputies, Paris, 1847.

18. Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, Nothing. The event will tell c. 1812-1820, etching and aquatint, 155×200 mm

19. P.J. Prudhon, Crucifixion, 1822, oil on canvas, 278×165.5, Musée du Louvre.

20. William Blake, Isaac Newton, 1795, copper engraving with pen and ink and watercolour, 460×600 mm, Tate Gallery, London.

21. William Blake, Nebuchadnezzar, 1795, copper engraving with pen and ink and watercolour, 446×620 mm, Tate Gallery, London.

22. William Blake, The Ancient of Days, from Europe: A Prophecy, “When he sets a compass upon the face of the deep” (Proverbs 8:27), watercolour, black ink and gold paint over a relief etched outline painted in yellow, 23.5×17, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester.

23. William Blake, Hecate or the Three Fates, c. 1795, pen and ink with watercolour, 439×581 mm, Tate Gallery, London.

24. Bertel Thorvaldsen, Christ, 1821, marble, Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen.

25. Bertel Thorvaldsen, Mercury Preparing to Kill Argus, 1818, marble, height 174 cm, Thorvaldsen's Museum, Copenhagen.

26. Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Portrait of Madame de Staël as Corinne on Cape Misenum, 1809, oil on canvas, 140×118 cm, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva.

27. Friedrich Heinrich Fuger, Alcestis Sacrifices Herself for Admetus, 1804-05, oil on canvas, 194×139 cm, Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna.

28. Eugène Delacroix, Mephistopheles in the Sky, 1828, print, illustration to Goethe’s Faust.

29. Friedrich Overbeck, The Triumph of Religion in the Arts, 1829-1840, oil on canvas, Stadel Museum, Frankfurt.

30. Friedrich Overbeck, Portrait of the Painter Franz Pforr, c. 1810, oil on canvas, 62×47 cm, Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

31. Franz Pforr, Shulamit and Mary, 1810-11, oil on panel, 34×32 cm, Private collection.

32. K. F. Schinkel, Gothic Cathedral with Imperial Palace, 1815, oil on canvas, 94 x 140 cm, Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

33. Caspar David Friedrich, Monk by the Sea, 1809, oil on canvas, 110×172 cm, Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

34. Detail.

35. J.M.W Turner, Snow Storm, Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps, 1812, oil on canvas, 145×236,5 cm, Tate Gallery, London.

36. Jacques Louis David, Napoleon at the St. Bernard Pass, 1801, oil on canvas, 246×231 cm, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna.

37. Philip James de Loutherbourg, A Waterspout in the Mountains of Switzerland, 1809, oil on canvas, 106.7×157.5 cms, N.T., Petworth House.

38. J.M.W. Turner, The Angel Standing in the Sun, 1846, oil on canvas, 78.7×78.7 cm, Tate, London.

39. J.M.W. Turner, Light and Colour, Goethe’s Theory, The Morning after the Deluge – Moses Writing the Book of Genesis, 1843, oil on canvas, 78.5×78.5 cm, Tate, London.

40. John Constable, The Leaping Horse, 1825, oil on canvas, 142×187 cm, Royal Academy of Arts, London.

41. John Constable, Stonehenge, 1836, watercolour, 387×591 mm, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

42. Carl Gustav Carus, Pilgrim in a Rocky Valley, c. 1820, oil on canvas, 28×22 cm, Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

43. Caspar David Friedrich, The Birefringence, 1830-1835, oil on canvas, 72×102 cm, Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

44. Samuel Palmer, Early Morning, 1825, pen and ink and wash, mixed with gum arabic, varnished, 188×232 mm, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

45. Samuel Palmer, Self-Portrait, c. 1825, black chalk heightened with white on buff paper, 291×229 mm, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

46. Wilhelm von Kobell, Isar Landscape near Munich, 1819, oak wood, 41×53 cm, Neue Pinakothek, Munich.

47. Johan Christian Clausen Dahl, Morning after a Stormy Night, 1819, oil on canvas, 75×105 cm, Neue Pinakothek, Munich.

48. Christen Købke, View of a Street in Østerbro outside Copenhagen aka Morning Light, 1836, Oil on canvas, 107×162 cm, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.

49. Johann Nepomuk Hoechle, Beethoven’s Room, 1827, pen and wash, 25.8×21.1 cm, Vienna, Historical Museum of Vienna.

50. Eugene Delacroix, Portrait of Paganini, 1832, oil on canvas, 42×28 cm, Philips’s Collection, Washington.

51. Ingres, The Violinist Niccolò Paganini, 1819, pencil, 298×218 mm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

52. David d’ Angers, Niccolò Paganini, 1830, Bronze, 60×30 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Angers.

53. David d’ Angers, Alfred de Musset, 1831, cast bronze, diameter 17,2 cm, Private collection.

54. Antoine-Augustin Preault, Slaughter, 1834, bronze, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Chartres.

55. Telemaco Signorini, The Suburb of Porta Adriana, Ravenna, 1875, oil on canvas, 66×100 cm, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome.

56. Giovanni Fattori, South Westerly Wind, oil on canvas, Galleria dell'Arte Moderna, Palazzo Pitti, Florence.

57. Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega Painting, 1866-1867, 2.5 × 28 cm, Collection Jucker, Milan.

58. Vincenzo Cabianca, Tuscan Storytellers of the 14th century, 1860, oil on canvas, Galleria dell'Arte Moderna, Palazzo Pitti, Florence.

59. Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Clara Bianca von Quandt, 1820, oil on panel, 37×26 cm, Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

60. Silvestro Lega, The Folk Song aka Singing the Stornello, oil on canvas, Galleria dell'Arte Moderna, Palazzo Pitti, Florence.

61. Giuseppe Abbati, Giovanni Fattori, Pause in the Maremma with Farmers and Ox-Cart, 1873, oil on canvas, location unknown.

62. Odoardi Borrani, Sand Diggers on the Mugnone, 1880, oil on canvas141×112 cm, Galleria dell'Arte Moderna, Palazzo Pitti, Florence.

63. Gustave Courbet, The Stonebreakers, 1849, oil on canvas, 165×257 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden.

64. Gustave Courbet, Pierre Joseph Proudhon and his Children, 1865, oil on canvas, 147×198 cm, Petit Palais, Paris.

65. Silvestro Lega, Giuseppe Mazzini on his Death Bed, 1873, oil on canvas, 76×97 cm, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence.