‘Winter Landscape’ (probably in 1811) in the National Gallery, offers a striking example of this recurrent configuration: a solitary figure in a snowly wilderness has dispensed with his crutches on sighting a wayside crucifix, whilst in the distance the outline of an extravagantly Gothic church becakons to a heaven indicated by a mist illuminated with pink brightness. In paintings such as ‘The Great enclosure’ or the starting early work ‘Monk on the Sea shore, Friedrich uses panoramic and luminous sky to suggest the majesty of the cosmos and the insignificance of humanity in relation to it. The last painting attracted admiration and amazement from Romantic writers, Klest remarking that the vastness of the scene created a sensation ‘as if one’s eyelids had been cut away’, referring to Friedrich’s renewed cropping of the foreground. . . . Page 233
Loading
1 comment
Dinesh said: