Painters From Germany

"In landscape it was Friedrich above all whose profound and vigorous mind, with total originality, laid hold of this tangle of banality, staleness, and tedium and—cutting through it with a mordant melancholy — raised from its midst a distinctively new and radiant poetic tendency."

"What a picture of death this landscape is!.. ..one shudders when looking at it."

"From time to time I see the painter Friedrich here. He has started a large landscape [the painting 'Cemetery at Dusk'].. .A large iron gate, which leds into a cemetery, stand open; by the gate, leaning on one of his posts and partly covered by its shadow, a man and a woman can be seen.. ..who have just buried their child and in the night are looking at its grave.. ..it is just a little grass mound, besides which one can see a spade, Streaks of mist lie over the cemetery, they hide the tree trunks from sight so that they seem detached from the ground. One can make out other graves through the misty veil, and, above all, natural monuments[!]; an upright stone looks like a grey ghost."

"Even the things most necessary to painting - the box of paints, the bottles of linseed oil, and the oil-rag - were moved to the adjoining room, because Frederick [Friedrich] was of the opinion that any objects would disturb his inner world of imagination.."

"[Friedrich] ignores the use of light [and] does not strive to adjust his colors to one another or to create a harmony.. ..[but his pictures were] thought-out inventions.."

"Artists and connoisseurs saw in Friedrich's art only a kind of mystic, because they themselves were only looking out for the mystic.. ..They did not see Friedrich's faithful and conscientious study of nature in everything he represented."

"We visited Friedrich's atelier today. Listening to him and seeing his paintings was wonderful. He has some bonhomie which pleases people and his paintings reveal his romantic imagination. As a rule, he expresses in them one thought or feeling, though vaguely. You may meditate over his paintings but not have a clear understanding of them, for they are vague even in his soul. They are dreams or daydreams. He often employs very simple natural things, such as an ice block floating on sea waves, a few trees in a dale, window of his room (facing the beautiful Elbe), knight meditating over ruins or tombstones, monk staring into the distance or below his feet: all this captivates your soul, plunges you into dreams, all invokes your imagination, powerfully though vaguely."

"LADY: Oh, I felt so at home in front of the picture, it truly touched me. It is truly lifelike, and when you were talking like that, it was all hazy, just like when I went for a walk beside the sea with our philosophical friends. I only wish that a fresh sea breeze was blowing and a sail was coming in, and that there was a glint of sunlight and the water was lapping. As it is, it's like a dream, having a nightmare or feeling homesick — let's move on, it's making me feel sad."

"A TALL, FORBEARING MAN: I am glad that there is still one landscape painter who pays attention to the strange conjunctures of the seasons and the sky, which produce the most striking effects in even the poorest regions. True, I would prefer it if he also had the gift and the technique to represent it truthfully; in this respect he is as far inferior to some of the Dutch School who have painted subjects similar to this as he is their superior in his overall approach."

"..northerly Ossianic nature reflected the icy air and the chalck-cliffed coasts of the Baltic Sea where he was brought up."

"FIRST GENTLEMAN: Magnificent, certainly, you are right. (to the Lady) But, my dear, you have not said a word."

"Friedrich has now given a task: someone wants to have two pictures - one representing an Italian landscape in all its luxuriant magnificent beauty, the other - the awe inspiring nature of the north. It is the second that Friedrich has undertaken to paint; he does not know what it will be. He is waiting for the moment of inspiration, which frequently comes to him, as he told me, in a dream."

"SECOND GENTLEMAN: How divinely the figure is chosen, it is not merely a device to show the height of the other objects, as in the work of the common run of painters. He is the subject itself, he is the picture; and as he seems to dream himself into this setting, as if into a sad mirror of his isolation, so the ship-less, enclosing sea, which binds him like a vow,"

"This picture [ 'Man and Woman contemplating the Moon',] full of sentiment and the quietness of nature, was painted by Friedrich in 1819 and he gave it to me in exchange for one of my own works. Friedrich had to copy it several times, but he did not approve of this, hence others copied it as well. Only the deserved destination for the picture, the Royal Picture Gallery, could convince me to part with it."

"GOVERNESS: Why did he paint nothing but dull skies? How lovely it would be if he had painted some men gathering amber on the seashore."

"FIRST YOUNG LADY: Oh yes, I'd like to fish for a nice amber necklace for myself."

"GENTLEMAN: Magnificent, magnificent! This is the only artist who expresses a soul in his landscapes. There is a great individuality in this picture, high truth, solitude, the overcast, melancholy sky — he knows what he’s painting all right."

"Yet my own impressions of this wonderful painting are too confused, and so, before I venture to express them in full, I have decided to learn what I can from the remarks of the couples who pass before it [at the exhibition] from morning till evening. I listened to the remarks of the many viewers around me and now relay them as comments on this painting, which is surely a stage set before which a scene must be acted, for it allows no repose:"

"There can be nothing sadder or more desolate in the world than this place: the only spark of life in the broad domain of death, the lonely center in the lonely circle. The picture, with its two or three mysterious subjects (monk, dune, sea), lies there like an apocalypse.."

"it is as if one's eyelids had been cut off. Yet the painter has undoubtedly broken an entirely new path in the field of his art, and I am convinced that with his spirit, a square mile of the sand of Mark Brandenburg could be represented with a barberry bush, on which a lone crow might sit preening itself"

"SECOND GENTLEMAN: And he also paints what he knows, and feels it, and thinks it, and paints it."

"Why, if the artist painted this landscape using its own chalk and its own water, I believe he would make the foxes and wolves weep: the most powerful praise, without doubt, that could be given to this kind of landscape painting."

"Whenever a storm with thunder and lightning moved over the sea, he would hurry out to the top of the cliffs as if he had a pact of friendship with the forces of nature, or even went on into the oakwood where the lightning had split a tall tree from top to bottom, which led him to murmur: 'How great, how mighty, how wonderful!'"

"..it was a picture of the kind that only an aeronaut can see, when he rises in his airship above the height of the clouds.. ..up to where.. ..the untroubled blue of the heaven is visible between the wisps of mist."

"It is magnificent to stand in infinite solitude on the seashore, beneath an overcast sky, and to look on an endless waste of water. Part of this feeling is the fact that one has made life's way there and yet must go back, that one would like to cross over but cannot, that one sees nothing to support life and yet senses the voice of life in the sigh of the waves, the murmur of the air, the passing clouds and the lonely cry of birds."

"On the day he is painting air he may not be spoken to!"

"SECOND GENTLEMAN: [the monk].. ..he does predict the weather, he is the one within the wholeness, the lonely center in the lonely circle."

"The works of Friedrich differ greatly from those of other landscape painters in their motifs. The air - even though he paints it masterfully - takes up more than half of the space in most of his compositions. Middle- and background are often missing because his motifs don't require them. He likes to paint unfathomable plains. He is faithful to nature even in the smallest details and he has mastered his technique - in his oil paintings and sepia drawings - to perfection. His landscapes contain a melancholy, mysteriously religious meaning. They affect the heart more than the eye."

"..I must not neglect to report to you the three friends I have won. The firsts the composer Carl Maria [von] Weber.. ... the second, the landscape painter Friedrich.. ..His paintings are actually lyrical poems.. ..I described for him lately, when we conversed of suchlike moods, the rare beauty of the moonlight that we [Hjort and Olivia Rasbech] observed as we wandered past the old limestone kiln, and my words fell so fortuitously that he burst out: Das mach ich Ihnen! [I shall paint that for you!].. ..prepared to take my leave he said: Give me the lady's address the next time we meet, and you shall find that upon your return from this voyage, the painting shall adorn her wall.. .. At the very next meeting between us, he demanded to be shown your portrait, which I naturally had in my possession, and he already had a first draft of the painting, which he showed to me with these very words: Nicht wahr? So war's? [That’s how it was, wasn't it?].. .I hesitated for a few weeks, but then I had to yield, upon which he solemnly declared: Ein festes Auge, das ist jafast wie ein Knäblein! Mag's einen herrlichen Charakter geben, wenn sie ins Leben tritt [A firm gaze; it is almost like that of a small boy! May it give her a delightful character when she steps out into life]."

"Part of this feeling is a claim made by the heart and a rejection, if I may call it that, on the part of nature. But this is impossible in front of the picture, and what I should have found in the picture itself I found only between myself and the picture, namely a claim my heart made on the picture and the picture's rejection of me; and so I myself became the monk, and the picture became the dune, but the sea itself, on which I should have looked out with longing — the sea was absent."

"It is doubtful whether the artist [unknown] altogether knew what he depicted here in this panel, and even more doubtful whether he could have expressed it in words. That which we praise here as well thought-out and cleverly arranged may, in fact, have been achieved by him unconsciously; for the artist was transformed by pure harmoniousness while executing this picture, and his feeling become his law. Only his disposition, his spiritual exaltation, could have brought forth such a fruit as this picture. Just as the pious man prays without speaking a word and the Almighty hearkens unto him, so the artist with true feeling paints and the sensitive man understands and recognizes it; while even the less sensitive gain some inkling of it."

"When a landscape is enveloped in mist it appears larger, more majestic, and increases the power of imagination.. .The eye and the imagination are on the whole more attracted."

"What the newer landscape artists see in a circle of a hundred degrees in Nature they press together unmercifully into an angle of vision of only forty-five degrees. And furthermore, what is in Nature separated by large spaces, is compressed into a cramped space and overfills and oversatiates the eye, creating an unfavorable and disquieting effect on the viewer."

"People are always talking about 'incidentals'; but nothing is incidental in a picture, everything is indispensable to the whole effect, so nothing must be neglected. If a man can give value to the main part of his composition only by negligent treatment of the subordinate portions, his work is in a bad way. Everything must and can be carefully executed, without the different parts obtruding themselves on the eye. The proper subordination of the parts to the whole is not achieved by neglecting incidental features, but by correct grouping and by the distribution of light and shadow."

"People say of such-and-such a painter that he has great command of his brush. Might it not be more correct to say that he is controlled of his brush? Merely for the satisfaction of his vanity, to paint brilliantly and display skill with the brush, he has sacrificed the nobler considerations of naturalness and truth – and thus achieved sorry fame as a brilliant technician."

"In this big moonlit landscape by the painter N.N., that deservedly celebrated technician, one sees more than one would wish, or that can actually be seen by moonlight. But what the perceptive, sensitive soul looks for in every painting, and rightly expects to find, is missing.. ..If that painter could find it in himself to paint fewer, but more deeply-felt, pictures instead of so many clever ones, his contemporaries and posterity would be more grateful to him."

"We urge the artist [Friedrich] to undertake serious study of antiquity and of nature as the ancients saw it."

"To many it is incomprehensible that art has to emerge from a person's inner being, 'that it has to do with one's morality, one's religion..'. But so it does. You should trade only in what you recognize to be true and beautiful, noble and good in your soul."

"The artist's feeling is his law. Genuine feeling can never be contrary to nature; it is always in harmony with her. But another person's feelings should never be imposed on us as law. Spiritual affinity leads to similarity in work, but such affinity is something entirely different from mimicry. Whatever people may say of Y's paintings and how they often resemble Z's, yet they proceed from Y and are his sole property."

"Every truthful work of art must express a definite feeling, must move the spirit of the spectator either to joy or to sadness.. ..rather than try to unite all sensations, as thought mixed together with a twirling stick."

"What pleases us about the older paintings is above all their pious simplicity.. .However, we do not want to become simple as many have done, but rather become pious and imitate their virtues."

"You call me a misanthrope because I avoid society. You err; I love society. Yet in order not to hate people, I must avoid their company."

"FIRST GENTLEMAN: Yes, he is the soul, the heart, the whole picture's reflection in itself and on itself."

"I am far from wanting to resist the demands of my time, except when they are purely a matter of fashion. Instead, I continue to hope that time itself will destroy its own offspring, perhaps quite soon. But I am not so weak as to submit to the demands of the age when they go against my convictions. I spin a cocoon around myself; let others do the same. I shall leave it up to time to show what will come of it: a brilliant butterfly or a maggot."

"Here is coldness, impetuousness, dying, and despair."

"..the great white blanket of snow [in one of his painting of Cemetery / Church in the Snow, mid-1820's].. ..the essence of the utmost purity, beneath which nature prepares herself for a new life.."

"Just as the reverent man prays without uttering words, and the Lord hears him, the sensitive painter paints, and the sensitive man understands and recognizes him, but even the more obtuse carry away something from his work."

"Man should not be held as an absolute standard for mankind, but the Godly, the infinite is his goal.. .Follow without hesitation the voice of your inner self; for it is the Godly in us and leads us not to astray.."

"Sometimes I try to think and nothing comes out of it; but it happens that I doze off and suddenly feel as though someone is rousing me. I am startled, open my eyes, and what my mind was looking for stands before me like an apparition - at once I seize my pencil to draw; the main thing has been done."

"The picture [Friedrich's painting: 'The Cross on the Baltic Sea' ] for your friend has already been sketched out, but there is no church in it, not a single tree or plant, not a blade of grass. On a bare and rocky seashore there stands, high up, the cross - for those who see it that way, a consolation, and for those who don't see it that way, just a cross."