Mountain Landscape with Rainbow

Mountain Landscape with Rainbow
Mountain Landscape with Rainbow
German: Gebirgslandschaft mit Regenbogen
Artist	Caspar David Friedrich
Year	1809–10
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	70 cm× 102 cm(27.5 in× 40.1 in)
Location	Museum Folkwang, Essen

Last updated October 11, 2024

Mountain Landscape with Rainbow (German : Gebirgslandschaft mit Regenbogen), is an oil painting by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich, from 1809-1810. Depicting a traveler who has stopped to view a mountainous landscape with a rainbow shining above, the painting was inspired by Friedrich's travels through Germany and along the shores of the Baltic Sea in 1809. Influenced by the Romantic values of subjective experience, Friedrich portrays a figure enraptured by the sublimity of nature.^[1]

Background

Friedrich was one of the leading artists of the German Romantic movement, which emphasized emotion, spirituality, and individual experience.^[4] He believed subjectivity was an essential part of being an artist, writing "the artist's law is feeling. Pure feeling can never contradict nature but is always in harmony with her" and that it was important to "close your physical eye" and "see your painting with the spiritual eye."^[5]

He is best known for his preoccupation with portraying the beauty and sublime power of nature through landscape paintings, often with a religious undercurrent.^[6] As a devout Protestant, Friedrich was inspired by the writings of Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten (1758-1810), a pastor-poet who preached that divinity could be experienced through one’s personal experience of nature, in which the manifestation of God can be found. Kosegarten’s use of imagery directly inspired by the Baltic coast in his poems and sermons especially connected with Friedrich, who was born and raised in the German northeastern region of Pomerania, which borders the Baltic Sea. Friedrich channeled a similar religious reverence for nature into his paintings, such as The Monk by the Sea. He was recognized as a trailblazer in Romantic art for these works, which were said to have a distinct “Kosegartian effect” by German poet Heinrich von Kleist.^[7]

Connected to his dedication to Romantic ideals such as individual experience and subjectivity, Friedrich is also famous for his use of the visual motif of the Rückenfigur in his landscape paintings, a figure in the foreground of the painting who turns his back toward the viewer and looks at nature. A famous example of this is in Friedrich’s 1818 painting, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog . The painting’s viewer is meant to identify with the Rückenfigur, as they are both spectators of the landscape. The Rückenfigur further defines the landscape as a perceived and experienced through an individual perspective rather than an objective one.^[8]

Composition and analysis

In Mountain Landscape with Rainbow, Friedrich represents nature as a product of the artist’s individual inner experience of the world. He indicates this personal dimension by painting a Rückenfigur in the foreground with similar physical features to himself, a blond man with bushy facial hair. The Rückenfigur’s gaze is hidden, allowing the viewer to identify with him and understand the painting’s landscape is being seen through his lens. The way the landscape completely engulfs the figure in size on the canvas also implies a sublime experience of nature.^[9]

The landscape is not a literal representation of ordinary nature.^[10] The rainbow, for example, exists in direct contradiction with nature, for it can only appear when its light source is behind the viewer. In Mountain Landscape with Rainbow, there are two sources of light: one being the sun illuminating the man in the foreground and the other being the moon shining through the clouds above the rainbow. Neither light source is in a position where it could cause the rainbow.^[11] Not only does this further characterize the landscape as a subjective personal experience of nature, but it also works to serve as a religious symbol.

The sharp contrast between the foreground and background—the illumination of the figure and the darkness of the mountainous valley—may symbolize the contradiction between two different planes of existence: the spiritual and physical. These two worlds are connected by a rainbow, which, according to Peter Russell, could be serving as an allusion to the rainbow in the Biblical account of Noah’s ark, representing the covenant between God and humanity.^[12] Raymond Lee suggests that the pale colors are likely meant as a symbolic contrast to the foreboding darkness, a symbol of God’s peace and promise in a symbolic representation of the valley of death.^[13] The rock the figure is leaning on may also contribute to the painting's religious themes, as Friedrich is known for using rocks to represent the solidity of Christian faith in his other paintings, such as in Cross in the Mountains .^[14]

Friedrich, The Monk by the Sea, 1809
Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818
Friedrich, Cross in the Mountains, 1808

Related Research Articles

Caspar David Friedrich was a German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his allegorical landscapes, which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins. His primary interest was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti-classical work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. Friedrich's paintings characteristically set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension".

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Wanderer above the Sea of Fog is a painting by German Romanticist artist Caspar David Friedrich made in 1818. It depicts a man standing upon a rocky precipice with his back to the viewer; he is gazing out on a landscape covered in a thick sea of fog through which other ridges, trees, and mountains pierce, which stretches out into the distance indefinitely.

The Stages of Life is an allegorical oil painting of 1835 by the German Romantic landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich. Completed just five years before his death, this picture, like many of his works, forms a meditation both on his own mortality and on the transience of life.

The Monk by the Sea is an oil painting by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. It was painted between 1808 and 1810 in Dresden and was first shown together with the painting The Abbey in the Oakwood in the Berlin Academy exhibition of 1810. On Friedrich's request The Monk by the Sea was hung above The Abbey in the Oakwood. After the exhibition, both pictures were bought by king Frederick Wilhelm III for his collection. Today, the paintings hang side by side in the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

The Abbey in the Oakwood is an oil painting by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. It was painted between 1809 and 1810 in Dresden and was first shown together with the painting The Monk by the Sea in the Prussian Academy of Arts exhibition of 1810. On Friedrich's request The Abbey in the Oakwood was hung beneath The Monk by the Sea. This painting is one of over two dozen of Friedrich's works that include cemeteries or graves.

The Sea of Ice, (1823–1824), is an oil painting that depicts a shipwreck in the Arctic by the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich. Before 1826 this painting was known as The Polar Sea.

The Tree of Crows is an oil painting by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich, from 1822. Acquired by the Louvre in 1975, it has been called one of Friedrich's "most compelling paintings." The painting depicts a twisted oak tree, bare but for a few dead leaves, seen against an evening sky. An inscription on the back of the canvas refers to the hill at the painting's center as a Hünengrab, or dolmen, a prehistoric burial ground. In the distance can be seen the ocean, and Cape Arkona's chalk cliffs, a favorite subject of Friedrich's. Two crows are perched on the oak, while a flock descends toward it. In the darkened foreground are a hacked trunk and the upright stump of another oak.

Two Men Contemplating the Moon and Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon are a series of similar paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, the setting being among his best-known works. Friedrich painted at least three versions, with one variation featuring a man and a woman. The 1819–20 version in the Galerie Neue Meister is thought to be the original; the c. 1824 variant with a woman is in the Alte Nationalgalerie; and the c. 1830 version is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Cairn in Snow, also known as Dolmen in the snow, is a landscape painting by the German painter Caspar David Friedrich. Friedrich is noted for his landscapes depicting features such as trees or Gothic ruins, silhouetted against the sky or in morning mists. The painting depicts leafless trees in the winter snow, with the tops of two of the trees broken off and the third bent by the prevailing wind, giving the work a haunted, spectral air. It is a Romantic allegorical landscape, depicting a stone cairn or dolmen set amid three oak trees on a hilltop, with a contemplative melancholy mood. It was probably painted around 1807, making it among Friedrich's first oil paintings. It measures 61 by 80 centimetres and has been held by the Galerie Neue Meister in Dresden since 1905.

The Lonely Tree is an 1822 oil-on-canvas painting by German painter Caspar David Friedrich. It measures 55 × 71 centimetres (22 × 28 in). The work depicts a panoramic view of a romantic landscape of plains with mountains in the background. A solitary oak tree dominates the foreground.

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The Rückenfigur is a compositional device in painting, graphic art, photography, and film. A person is seen from behind in the foreground of the image, contemplating the view before them, and is a means by which the viewer can identify with the image's figure and then recreate the space to be conveyed. It is commonly associated with German Romantic painting and particularly the landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich. In art historical research, it is debated whether the Rückenfigur actually invites identification or rather encourages second-order observation.

Cross in the Mountains, also known as the Tetschen Altar, is an oil painting by the German artist Caspar David Friedrich designed as an altarpiece. Among Friedrich's first major works, the 1808 painting marked an important break with the conventions of landscape painting by including Christian iconography. In the hierarchy of genres, religious (history) painting was considered the highest genre of art; Friedrich's use of landscape to evoke a spiritual message was thus controversial, causing debate between proponents of neoclassical ideals and the new German Romanticism of Friedrich and his peers.

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Woman at a Window is an 1822 oil painting by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. This painting is currently located in Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. The painting depicts an interior with a woman, seen from behind, peering out an opened window. Beyond the window, the masts of ships are visible. The woman in the piece is Friedrich's wife Caroline and the view from the window is from his studio overlooking the Elbe river in Dresden. Friedrich submitted his work to be exhibited at the Dresden Academy, however he did not complete the piece in time to be in the main exhibition.

The Woman with the Spider's Web is a small c. 1803 print by the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, made into a woodcut the same year by his brother Christian Friedrich, a carpenter and furniture maker.

The Great Enclosure or The Ostra Enclosure (Ostra-Gehege) is an 1831 oil-on-canvas painting by Caspar David Friedrich, now in the collection of the Albertinum of the Galerie Neue Meister, in Dresden.

Hutten's Grave (1823) is an oil on canvas painting by Caspar David Friedrich, showing a man in Lützow Free Corps uniform standing by the grave of the Renaissance humanist and German nationalist Ulrich von Hutten. Influenced heavily by the political climate of the time and Friedrich's own political beliefs, the painting is one of Friedrich's most political works and affirms his allegiance to the German nationalist movement. The painting was made to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Hutten's death and the 10th anniversary of Napoleon's invasion of Germany. It is now in the Klassik Stiftung Weimar's collection and on show in the Schlossmuseum at the Stadtschloss Weimar.

The Temple of Juno in Agrigento is an 1828-1830 oil on canvas painting of by Caspar David Friedrich. It is now in the Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, in Dortmund, which bought it from a Cologne art dealer in 1951. It is said to have been previously owned by the F. A. Brockhaus publishers in Leipzig.

References

↑ Russell, Peter (2016). Delphi Complete Paintings of Caspar David Friedrich (Illustrated). Delphi Classics. ISBN 9781786565006.
↑ Grave, Johannes (2017). Caspar David Friedrich (2nd ed.). London/New York: Prestel. p. 120. ISBN 978-3-7913-8357-6.
↑ "Friedrich, Caspar David", Benezit Dictionary of Artists, Oxford University Press, 2011-10-31, doi:10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.B00068386 , retrieved 2022-11-17
↑ Chu, Petra ten-Doesschate (2010). Nineteenth Century European Art (3rd ed.). Pearson. pp. 161–162. ISBN 978-0205707997.
↑ "Friedrich, Caspar David", Benezit Dictionary of Artists, Oxford University Press, 2011-10-31, doi:10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.B00068386 , retrieved 2022-11-17
↑ Russell, Peter (2016). Delphi Complete Paintings of Caspar David Friedrich (Illustrated). Delphi Classics. ISBN 9781786565006.
↑ Chu, Petra ten-Doesschate (2010). Nineteenth-century European art (3rd ed.). Pearson. p. 173. ISBN 9780205707997. OCLC 624045291.
↑ Koerner, Joseph Leo (2009). Caspar David Friedrich and the subject of landscape (2nd ed.). London: Reaktion Books. p. 89. ISBN 978-1-86189-750-3. OCLC 671655983.
↑ Koerner, Joseph Leo (2009). Caspar David Friedrich and the subject of landscape (2nd ed.). London: Reaktion Books. p. 89. ISBN 978-1-86189-750-3. OCLC 671655983.
↑ Russell, Peter (2016). Delphi Complete Paintings of Caspar David Friedrich (Illustrated). Delphi Classics. ISBN 9781786565006.
↑ Lee, Raymond L. (2001). The rainbow bridge : rainbows in art, myth, and science. Alistair B. Fraser. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 111–112. ISBN 0-271-01977-8. OCLC 41951270.
↑ Russell, Peter (2016). Delphi Complete Paintings of Caspar David Friedrich (Illustrated). Delphi Classics. ISBN 9781786565006.
↑ Lee, Raymond L. (2001). The rainbow bridge : rainbows in art, myth, and science. Alistair B. Fraser. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 111–112. ISBN 0-271-01977-8. OCLC 41951270.
↑ Chu, Petra ten-Doesschate (2010). Nineteenth-century European art (3rd ed.). Pearson. p. 175. ISBN 9780205707997. OCLC 624045291.

External links

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[:0-1] Russell, Peter (2016). Delphi Complete Paintings of Caspar David Friedrich (Illustrated). Delphi Classics. ISBN 9781786565006.

[2] Grave, Johannes (2017). Caspar David Friedrich (2nd ed.). London/New York: Prestel. p. 120. ISBN 978-3-7913-8357-6.

[:2-3] "Friedrich, Caspar David", Benezit Dictionary of Artists, Oxford University Press, 2011-10-31, doi:10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.B00068386 , retrieved 2022-11-17

[:1-4] Chu, Petra ten-Doesschate (2010). Nineteenth Century European Art (3rd ed.). Pearson. pp. 161–162. ISBN 978-0205707997.

[:22-5] "Friedrich, Caspar David", Benezit Dictionary of Artists, Oxford University Press, 2011-10-31, doi:10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.B00068386 , retrieved 2022-11-17

[:02-6] Russell, Peter (2016). Delphi Complete Paintings of Caspar David Friedrich (Illustrated). Delphi Classics. ISBN 9781786565006.

[7] Chu, Petra ten-Doesschate (2010). Nineteenth-century European art (3rd ed.). Pearson. p. 173. ISBN 9780205707997. OCLC 624045291.

[:3-8] Koerner, Joseph Leo (2009). Caspar David Friedrich and the subject of landscape (2nd ed.). London: Reaktion Books. p. 89. ISBN 978-1-86189-750-3. OCLC 671655983.

[:32-9] Koerner, Joseph Leo (2009). Caspar David Friedrich and the subject of landscape (2nd ed.). London: Reaktion Books. p. 89. ISBN 978-1-86189-750-3. OCLC 671655983.

[:03-10] Russell, Peter (2016). Delphi Complete Paintings of Caspar David Friedrich (Illustrated). Delphi Classics. ISBN 9781786565006.

[:4-11] Lee, Raymond L. (2001). The rainbow bridge : rainbows in art, myth, and science. Alistair B. Fraser. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 111–112. ISBN 0-271-01977-8. OCLC 41951270.

[:04-12] Russell, Peter (2016). Delphi Complete Paintings of Caspar David Friedrich (Illustrated). Delphi Classics. ISBN 9781786565006.

[:42-13] Lee, Raymond L. (2001). The rainbow bridge : rainbows in art, myth, and science. Alistair B. Fraser. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 111–112. ISBN 0-271-01977-8. OCLC 41951270.

[14] Chu, Petra ten-Doesschate (2010). Nineteenth-century European art (3rd ed.). Pearson. p. 175. ISBN 9780205707997. OCLC 624045291.

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v t e Caspar David Friedrich
List of works
Paintings	Cairn in Snow (1807) Cross in the Mountains (1808) The Monk by the Sea (1808–1810) The Abbey in the Oakwood (1809–10) Mountain Landscape with Rainbow (1809–10) Morning on the Riesengebirge (1810–11) The Tombs of the Old Heroes (1812) Neubrandenburg (c. 1816) Two Men by the Sea (1817) The Gazebo (1818) Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818) Chalk Cliffs on Rügen (1818) Seaside by Moonlight (1818) The Port of Greifswald (1818–1820) Two Men Contemplating the Moon; Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon (1820s) Evening (1821) River Bank in Fog (1821) The Lonely Tree (1822) Moonrise by the Sea (1822) The Tree of Crows (1822) Woman at a Window (1822) Hutten's Grave (1823) The Sea of Ice (1823–24) The Watzmann (1824–25) Cabin in the Snow (1827) Ships in Harbour, Evening (1828) The Temple of Juno in Agrigento (1828–1830) The Great Enclosure (1831) Ruins of Eldena Abbey in the Riesengebirge (1830–1834) Neubrandenburg Burning (1830–1835) Sunset (1830–1835) The Stages of Life (1835)
Prints	The Woman with the Spider's Web (1803) Woman with a Raven at an Abyss (c. 1803) Boy Sleeping on a Grave (c. 1803)
Related	Caspar David Friedrich in his Studio (1811/1819 paintings) Boundaries of Time: Caspar David Friedrich (1986 film) Zauber der Stille (2023 biography)