ANCLAS FONDEADAS

Christa Zaat

Caspar David Friedrich (German painter) 1774 - 1840
Ansicht eines Hafens (View of a Harbour), 1815-16
oil on canvas
90 x 71 cm.
Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin, Germany

Playing a prominent role in Friedrich's oeuvre are the themes of the sea, harbours and ships. Such motifs seem to have touched him deeply. The View of a Harbour may have been inspired by the harbour at Greifswald. It is evening, and between the masts of the two large ships in the middle ground stands the crescent of the waxing moon. Beneath it lie thin zones of colour, ranging from light yellow, orange and flaming red to lilac and grey on the horizon; above it, diagonal ribbons of cloud structure the sky. Within the almost unreal space thus created out of colour, the boats themselves are "floating" and seem to be moving forward out of the depths.

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Caspar David Friedrich (September 5, 1774 – May 7, 1840) was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation.[2] He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins. His primary interest as an artist 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".