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oil on canvas

Helmut Börsch-Supan writes of the present work:

'Since Friedrich's 200th birthday in 1974 only four new unknown works by the artist have been discovered: Winter Landscape in 1986, now in the National Gallery, London, which until then had been known only by a copy thought to be the original1; Forest Interior by Moonlight, acquired by the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, in 1992, whose existence could at least be surmised from its mention in the 1842 sale catalogue of the Georg Andreas Reimer collection2; a recently discovered study for The Great Heath near Dresden, recently with a London dealership3; and now the present Nordic spring landscape, of which there is no record, either in the literature or in the form of a study. And yet the hand, palette, motif and artist's materials raise an attribution to Friedrich beyond all doubt.

The painting depicts an expansive landscape with thawing snow, enclosed in the distance by a mountain range. In the foreground brown earth and grassy ground appear in several places. From the right, the smooth whitish-blue surface of a frozen body of water edges its way into the picture plane. Beyond it a blanket of snow extends as far as a chain of low hills skirting the high mountains. To the right of centre, in the distance, accentuated by a marked rock formation behind and above them, stand two men in reddish clothing seen from behind, the one on the left with a long pole, perhaps a spear, the other holding a bow. These are not - as often with Friedrich - figures contemplating nature, occupying the very foreground of the picture plane and given over to the act of looking, but rather two individuals in search of food to make a humble living. They are hunters, eager for prey. Friedrich sometimes did depict man vegetating in his daily life, oblivious to the deeper meaning of nature, in contrast to the seeing, meditating onlooker. This dichotomy is most clearly illustrated in the famous pair of paintings of 1822 in the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Village at Dawn, and Moonrise by the Sea. In the former work, the small shepherd figure is just part of the landscape, whereas in the latter the large-scale figures, their backs turned to the viewer, are seen probing the meaning of Nature.

Otherwise nothing points to civilisation; no path, no suggestion of agriculture. There is neither tree nor bush to be seen. We are made to feel transported to the far north, where the sun frees the land from snow and ice for only a short time each year.

The two men, who have advanced along the ice-free ground as far as they dare, look to the right in their hope of finding prey while our own eye is drawn to the left towards the highest of the mountain peaks in the distance. Above it arches a threatening steel-blue sky, which seems to signal new snow. However the eye that wanders higher still will observe an auspicious brightening in the sky along the upper edge of the picture. Here, in the upper centre, our eye's sweeping movement comes to rest. This positive sign, recognisable by those prepared to believe in hope, is found in many of Friedrich's paintings.

In 1823/4 Friedrich painted a comparable, albeit more dramatic composition, his famous Sea of Ice (Hamburg, Kunsthalle)4 (fig. 1). Only the viewer who notices the brightening of the sky along the upper edge of the picture will sense the glimmer of hope above the apparent death trap. In Friedrich's Eldena Monastery of 1825, the two figures are similarly oblivious to nature's message, the small patch of blue sky shining through the west window of the ruin pointing to salvation from the chaos of the foreground5.

Nature, as represented in the present work, arouses as it often does with Friedrich, mixed and thought-provoking feelings. The inhospitality and vastness of the landscape, along with the frost and the darkening sky, arouse discomfort. Conversely, however - quite apart from the lightening sky - the viewer becomes aware of unique chromatic harmonies. In all that is unpleasant, an alluring beauty is discovered, which invigorates and gives reason for hope. The white of the snow is broken up, partly into greys, partly into the light blue of the ice floe, which cuts into the land like a knife. The grey-blue of the sky responds to the mixtures of brown and green on the ground. The foreground is rendered with the light dabs and fine modelling to be observed in Friedrich's work after about 1823, and particularly evident in the Sea of Ice. None other than Friedrich paints in this way.

Eine nordische Frühlingslandschaft is painted on white-primed canvas and is unlined. It has its original stretcher, typical of the kind used by Friedrich, and the relatively simple gilt-wood frame would appear to be original as well. The owner bought the picture at a small Munich auction as a work by an anonymous artist. Dirt on the surface as well as two tears had made it virtually unappreciable. However, with the exception of a few minimal pigment losses, removal of the dirty varnish revealed the surface of the painting to be perfectly preserved.

Though the dimensions of the picture do not correspond to Friedrich's usual standard canvas sizes of circa 22x30, 37x44, 55x71, 71x90 or 135x170cm., there are a number of recorded works with the same measurements as this newly discovered painting: Fields near Greifswald of circa 1820/22 in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg6; Landscape in the Riesengebirge7 (fig. 2), also in the Kunsthalle, of circa 1823, whose simple composition with its horizontally-running mountain range can be compared to that of the present work; as well as the late and unfinished mountain landscape in the Städel, Frankfurt8. Georg Andreas Reimer owned two, now lost, pictures, A Cave with the Moon Shining Through of 1821, and Seashore by Moonlight, whose similar dimensions link them to this group9.

Not only the light brush strokes and the striking palette, but also the measurements therefore provide a case for the newly discovered work having been executed after 1820. The argument gains much greater weight, however, in attempting to place the painting chronologically within Friedrich's group of paintings depicting the arctic north. Until the discovery of the present work, five paintings of this subject were known, three surviving and two lost. They can be dated to between 1822 and 1824.

The most famous is the Sea of Ice in Hamburg, measuring 96.7x129.9cm, which Friedrich first showed at the Dresden Academy exhibition of 1824. Two years earlier, in 1822, Friedrich had been commissioned to paint a similar sized work entitled Ship Run Aground on Greenland's Coast, Moonlight - it was also known as Failed Expedition to the North Pole and as Hope Dashed - by Dresden collector Johann Gottlieb von Quandt, as a pendant to an idealised landscape titled The Beauty of Italian Nature belonging to Johann Martin von Rohden10. The painting is lost, its composition recorded in a drawing and in a print after the painting11. Depicting a ship, the Hope, trapped by polar ice, it evokes melancholy and despair, but as in the present work, the thawing snow of spring signals the hope that reigns over human actions.

An article, 'Kunstnachrichten aus Dresden, Winterlandschaften', in 1823's Artistisches Notizenblatt, describes another painting which brings the newly-discovered picture to mind: 'Only he [Friedrich] succeeds in bringing corners of the globe, barely explored even by the [expeditionary vessels] Parry or Ross, and where every art lover would feel lost, closer to us through his art, and through his paintings we are made to feel we know them. [...] A small painting, which seems to take this inhospitable ocean as its subject, depicts nothing but mountains, losing themselves in the distant mist of a cold evening; in the middle ground is a frozen river, on whose shores the heather-covered canyons have been so swept clear of snow by the storms that moss and grass show through in places. Otherwise there is no sign of life -"Horror wide extends / His desolate domain" - yet in the air one sees the effect of a setting sun, on the steppe its waning light, and no matter how extreme the frost, a milder light envelops this landscape. The sun, which informed the most cheery-minded painters, shone over the artist even here.'12

Despite several similarities between this description and the newly discovered painting, the latter remains enigmatic as it is not 'small' and with its unmistakable human staffage is not entirely without life.
Two other known nordic landscapes can be described as 'small', however. The first, measuring 23x30cm and badly damaged in the fire which ravaged the Friedrich Haus in 190113, is now in a private collection. A second, painted circa 1823, and measuring 22x30.5cm, is in the National Gallery, Prague14.

Born in Greifswald, which until 1815 belonged to Sweden, Friedrich felt a special affinity for Europe's north. While studying at the Copenhagen Academy from 1794-98 he would have seen depictions of nordic lands, particularly as Norway had been Danish territory until 1814. Iceland too was Danish. Friedrich had wanted to travel to Iceland in 1811, as evinced by a letter of 16 July of that year from Goethe's friend Karl Ludwig von Knebel15. The trip never took place. But also Friedrich's close friendship with the Norwegian Johan Christian Dahl, with whom he had shared a house since 1823, fed his interest in the north.

Friedrich's interest in nordic subjects appears to have continued beyond 1823, for Carl August Böttiger, while visiting the artist in 1825, mentions that, in addition to the Sea of Ice and Quandt's picture, Friedrich was planning a third picture of the arctic region16. While one might have expected this third picture to be of a similar size to the other two, it cannot be ruled out that the newly discovered work is the one planned in 1825. What is important about Böttiger's remarks is that by 1825 the nordic theme had not yet been exhausted by Friedrich17.

This supports a later date of execution for the painting. It stands apart from the earlier polar pictures by virtue of its calmer atmosphere, typical of Friedrich's late Bohemian and Silesian mountain landscapes. But it is above all the lighter brushstroke which speak for a date of execution in the second half of the 1820s. This same brushstroke is found in Cemetery in the Snow of 182618 in Leipzig, and Snowed in Hut of the following year, in the Nationalgalerie, Berlin19. Snowy landscapes dominate Friedrich's work between 1826 and 1830, as illness overcame him. This would make the thaw as a symbol of hope in the present work all the more significant.'

We are grateful to Professor Börsch-Supan for his assistance in cataloguing this work, which is accompanied by his essay dated 8 February 2004.

¹ Caspar David Friedrich, Winter Landscape, exhibition catalogue, London, National Gallery 1990, No. 17

² Peter-Klaus Schuster, 'C. D. Friedrich's "Waldinneres bei Mondschein": eine Neuerwerbung für die Nationalgalerie', in Jahrbuch Preßischer Kulturbesitz XXIX, 1992, pp 367-87

³ Out into Nature, The Dawn of Plein-air Painting in Germany 1820 -1885. Exhibition catalogue, Colnaghi, London, 2003, No. 1

⁴ Helmut Börsch-Supan & Karl Wilhelm Jähnig, Caspar David Friedrich, Gemälde, Druckgraphik und bildmäßige Zeichnungen, Munich, 1973, no. 311, Plate 26, p. 109. Abbreviated below as B-S

⁵ B-S 328
⁶ B-S 285

⁷ B-S 304

⁸ B-S 420

⁹ Verzeichnis einer Sammlung von Ölgemälden aus dem Nachlass des Stadtraths und Buchhändlers Georg Andreas Reimer zu Berlin, welche den 27. März versteigert werden sollen, Berlin, 1842, nos 80 and 92. Reproduced in Börsch-Supan, Jähnig 1973, p. 132

¹⁰ B-S 295 ¹¹ Johann Martin von Rohden 1778-1868, exhibition catalogue, Kassel, Neue Galerie, 2000, no. 164; Helmut Börsch-Supan, 'Caspar David Friedrichs Gemälde "Der Junotempel von Agrigent", in Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst, 3. Series, vol. XXII, 1971, p. 205-216

¹² H. Hase, 'Kunstnachrichten aus Dresden. Winterlandschaften', in Artistisches Notizenblatt, 1823, pp. 21-22, reproduced in Börsch-Supan & Jähnig 1973, p. 99

¹³ B-S 310

¹⁴ B-S 312

¹⁵ Heinrich Düntzer, Aus Karl Ludwig von Knebels Briefwechsel mit seiner Schwester Henriette (1774-1813). Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Hof- und Literaturgeschichte, Jena, 1858, pp. 533 & 534
¹⁶ B. Böttinger, 'Blicke auf einheimische Künstler. Die Professoren Dahl und Friedrich, Kupferstecher Rosmäsler', in Artistisches Notizenblatt 1825, pp. 21-23, reproduced in Börsch-Supan & Jähnig 1973, p. 106

¹⁷ In 1826 Carl Gustav Carus, too, painted an arctic work known only from descriptions, titled Sea and Volcanos on the South-West tip of Iceland which he showed Friedrich. The inspiration had come from Dresden zoologist Friedrich August Thienemann (1793-1858) who made a study trip to Iceland and Norway after 1820. (Marianne Prause, Carl Gustav Carus, Leben und Werk, Berlin, 1968, no. 151)
¹⁸ B-S 353

¹⁹ B-S 355, colour plate 29, p. 121