Scientist of the Day - Caspar David Friedrich

The Sea of Ice, oil on canvas, by Caspar David Friedrich,1824, Kunsthalle, Hamburg (wga.hu)

Caspar David Friedrich, a German painter, died May 7, 1840, at the age of 65.  Friederich was perhaps the foremost of the German Romantic painters; indeed, if you look up "Romanticism" or "German Romanticism” in any illustrated encyclopedia, such as Wikipedia, the odds are good that the first image will be a Friedrich painting, and probably The Wanderer above a Sea of Fog (third image).  Romantic painting emphasized the power and glory of Nature, and stressed the importance of direct human encounters with nature as necessary for spiritual growth.  It was a reaction against classicism and neoclassicism, and hence in its historical aspects, romantic painting featured medieval rather than classical themes, so that depicted ruins, for example tended to be Gothic rather than Greek or Roman. German Romanticism began a little before 1800 and was fading fast by 1850.  Friederich, whose most acclaimed works date from 1810 to 1835, helped define the movement, not only in Germany, but in England as well (the Germans and the French were still not speaking).

Self-portrait of Caspar David Friedrich, drawing, 1802, Kunsthalle, Hamburg (Wikimedia commons)

I am not at all a scholar of art history, or of Romanticism in the arts, so all I wish to do here is show you half-a-dozen of Friedrich's paintings, selected because I (and most others) find them awesome in all senses of the word, and then to speculate about possible connections between German Romantic art and the world of contemporary science.

The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, oil on canvas, by Caspar David Friedrich, 1818, Kunsthalle, Hamburg (wga.hu)

You have certainly seen The Wanderer many times, since it seems to be the icon of Romanticism, with its striking image of a man seemingly overwhelmed by nature, yet at the same time rising above it.  It was painted in 1817-18, and the original can be seen in the Kunsthalle in Hamburg.  It uses an often-employed Friedrich technique of viewing a human figure from behind, as if encouraging the viewer to take his or her place in a confrontation with and immersion in the sublime.

Two Men Contemplating the Moon, oil on canvas, by Caspar David Friedrich, 1825-30, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (metmuseum.org)

Sometimes the subject matter of a Romantic painting can be quite ordinary.  Friedrich made at least three separate paintings of two people looking at the Moon; two showing Friedrich and a friend (from behind), and one depicting a man and a woman, thought to be Friedrich and his wife, whom he married in 1818.  The last of this suite of variations, with Friederich and his male friend, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, so we show you that one (fourth image), since otherwise, his finest paintings are all in Germany. It dates to 1825-30.

It is not surprising that the attempts, begun by the English in 1818, to penetrate Arctic ice in a search for a Northwest passage, should have appealed to Friedrich, especially after the first reports and images came back of ships being threatened by gigantic ice floes. Friedrich painted The Sea of Ice in 1824 (first image), and since, as far as I know, no ship had yet been crushed by ice, his painting presages, rather than borrows from, the many images that would be forthcoming in the 1830s of obliterated ships and their hapless crews.  The Sea of Ice is also in the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, along with The Wanderer. You can see some images of real crushed ships in our exhibition, Ice: A Victorian Romance.  Here is an example from 1838.

View of a Harbor, oil on canvas, by Caspar David Friedrich, 1815-16, Schloss Sanssouci, Berlin (wga.hu)

I like Friedrich’s View of a Harbor (fifth image), although it is not included in most survey articles on Friedrich. While maritime art goes back to long before Friedrich, it was unusual to show a harbor full of ships, all with sails furled, as if to say: when Nature is on the rampage (or Nature turns out the lights), we can only sit and wait her out.  It is interesting that there is one tiny human in the rigging, and several more in a foreground dory, but otherwise, the naked ships, the dawn, and the mist control the scene.  The painting, dating to 1815-16, is in the Schloss Sanssouci, Berlin.

Hochgebirge, oil on canvas, by Caspar David Friedrich, 1824, once in the Old National Gallery in Berlin, now lost or destroyed; from a postcard (ebay.com)

Friedrich also liked to paint rocks and mountains, which seems natural, if your goal is to depict nature in its most overwhelming form.  He painted two mountains, in 1824 and 1825, depicting the Watzmann, in the German Alps, and what he called the Hochgebirge. You can see the former here – it is not my favorite Friedrich painting – but it is not so easy to find a good reproduction of the latter, the Hochgebirge, since it was apparently destroyed or lost in Berlin in 1945.  But I did find a pre-1945 postcard for sale on eBay, and borrowed it (sixth image). The intriguing thing about the painting is that it apparently depicts a group of mountains called the Grandes Jorasses, near Chamonix in the French Alps, and is accurate down to the last detail, and yet Friedrich never went to Chamonix. The painting is also not typical of his style, being more realistic, with the fog and the moonlight missing.  At least one article has been written arguing that Friedrich’s two mountain paintings were influenced by the “geognosic” approach of the German mineralogist Abraham Gottlob Werner in Freiberg, but I have yet to be convinced.

Was there a counterpart of Romantic painting, which we might call Romantic science?  We have already mentioned the voyages of exploration, especially the Arctic voyages from 1818 on, as seeming to seek confrontation with almost overpowering natural forces, and they would seem to qualify as Romantic science.  But when I seek someone in the sciences who seems to exemplify the spirit of Romanticism, I think of Alexander von Humboldt, yet Humboldt is almost never mentioned in the same breath with Friedrich.  Perhaps I am just not familiar enough with the art historical literature on Friedrich – there is quite a bit of it. Or perhaps Humboldt, with his battery of measuring instruments, is confronting Nature in a manner quite foreign to the German Romantic artists.

Two Men before a Waterfall at Sunset, oil on canvas, by Johan Christian Dahl, 1823, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (metmuseum.org)

The Met in New York is planning an exhibition on Friedrich in the spring months of 2025 – here is their announcement.  I don’t know if this is the same, or a different, exhibition as the one that was at the Kunst Museum, Winterthur (Switzerland) in 2023.  It should certainly be worth seeing, and perhaps The Wanderer above the Fog and/or The Sea of Ice will be on loan for the occasion. The Met has another Romantic painting, by Johan Christian Dahl, a Norwegian, with which I will conclude (seventh image).  The painting, called Two Men before a Waterfall at Sunset, 1822-23, depicts Dahl and Friedrich, his good friend, on the right, looking at a waterfall, in the manner of Two Men Contemplating the Moon.  It might qualify as a portrait of Friedrich, except that, in typical Friedrich fashion, the figures are shown with their backs to the viewer.

William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.