CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH, his quotes on landscape-painting art and Nature in German Romanticism
Caspar David Friedrich (1774 – 1840), his artist quotes on Romantic art and landscape painting. Friedrich was a leading painter-artist of German Romanticism, famous for his wide landscape paintings of sea-views or in the high mountains, like his famous picture ‘The Monk’. Most of Friedrich’s landscapes show humble human beings in a wide surrounding, very often seen from their back. Friedrich’s primary interest as an Romantic artist was the contemplation of Nature. Famous paintings of Friedrich are ‘Wanderer, The Monk, Moonrise, Winterreise’ His symbolic paintng art wants to convey a subjective, emotional response to Nature in the spectator of his art.
* At the bottom are some art links for biography facts and images of the great painting art of Caspar David Friedrich, who had even strong influence on 20th century abstract artists. – the editor
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Caspar David Friedrich: ‘Moonrise’, 1822 |
Caspar David Friedrich, his artist quotes on landscape painting art in German Romanticism
– 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.
* source of his Romantic art-statement quote on ‘feeling’ as an essential source for creating art in German Romanticism style: ‘Thoughts on Art’, Caspar David Friedrich, as quoted in ”Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock -”, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 32. (famous painter of German Romanticism art style, creating wide, large romantic landscape paintings)
– 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.
* his art quote on the importance of noble considerations of ‘naturalness and truth’ for creating painting art, from: ‘Thoughts on Art’, Caspar David Friedrich, as quoted in ”Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock -”, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 32 .
– 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.
* source of his artist quote – criticizing a very precise and detailed painting artist in his own times, from: ‘Thoughts on Art’, Caspar David Friedrich, as quoted in ”Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock -”, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 33.
– 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.
* his art statement against using ‘incidentals’ in creating pictures in a romantic style: ‘Thoughts on Art’, Caspar David Friedrich, as quoted in ”Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock -”, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 33-34
Caspar David Friedrich; art links for more biography information on the famous German artist in Romanticism
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