"Winter Landscape," Caspar David Friedrich, c.1811.
Friedrich (1774-1840) was THE great German Romantic artist, and now regarded as the most important European artist of his generation. He helped establish and codify the Romantic movement in art, rejecting Classical and Academic stuffiness, and instead creating intense emotional reactions to the natural world.
I love his work; he's full of dramatic vistas, craggy mountains, and moonlit mystery that stoke the imagination, which is exactly what he wanted. Gothic ruins, morning mists, and silhouetted figures looking out over the view are common in his works.
His work fell from favor in his lifetime, and he died forgotten and obscure. But, time was on his side; he was rediscovered in the 20th century and reassessed. Now he's the subject of exhibits and study like never before, along with renewed interest in Romanticism in general.
Here we've got a winter scene, with a roadside shrine under a pine tree, and a youth leaning on a boulder and praying, while a pair of crutches lie discarded in the snow. And in the mists in the background, the silhouette of a church or cathedral towers over all. One has a feeling of a miracle occurring, or about to occur.
From the National Gallery, London.
