Presumably until 1826, Friedrich returned again and again to his native city of Greifswald. Especially in his younger years, he often spent long periods in western Pomerania, which until 1815 belonged to Sweden, and internalized the flat, maritime landscape. One drawing of Greifswald seen from the west was probably made around 1806. (1) The squaring of the sheet indicates an intention to faithfully transfer the motif to canvas – which he evidently did in the two paintings Greifswald in the Moonlight (2) and Meadows near Greifswald (3). (4) Rather than altering significant buildings for the sake of the overall effect, as was done in some of his other cityscapes, Friedrich reproduced Greifswald’s premodern skyline exactly in both paintings. The city’s distances, scales, and proportions match those of the drawing, as does the location of the horizon line – largely occupied by the city itself – slightly under the central horizontal axis on the ground. The perspective of the watercolor View of Greifswald (Museum Georg Schäfer, Schweinfurt) is just as carefully arranged, but it shows the Hanseatic city from the east, probably from a boat on the River Ryck. (5) This sheet may have been connected with a trip to Greifswald in 1818, as Helmut Börsch-Supan suggests. (6) A comparison of these three works, which vary more or less the same motif, reveals Friedrich’s mastery in producing atmosphere through composition, plane, and color.

The work with the earliest date, Greifswald by Moonlight, differs from the other two in terms of mood: the moon looks gloomy, spherical, and visionary, shining light on the nocturnal scene and divided on the picture plane by the tower of the church of St. Nicholas. Like a “fence,” (7) the nets stretched on the shore separate the city from the foreground, and perhaps even from the viewer. Although nets are a frequent motif in Friedrich’s painting, they tend to be placed to the side, gently guiding the gaze from the shore to the open water. Exposed in this way and standing centrally in the water – which a comparison with the drawing reveals must have been Friedrich’s addition – they reinforce the overall impression of the painting’s otherworldly appearance.

The artist approached the silhouette of Greifswald in a very different way in the watercolor View of Greifswald. Located on the left half of the painting, the city’s vertical lines are balanced by the masts of the sailing boat to the right of the central axis. Depth is created solely in the foreground by the nuanced gradation of the blues of the Ryck. A lightness is conveyed by the white space of the sky, which takes up more than half of the picture. Friedrich appears to have had recourse once again to seventeenth-century Dutch painting for his rural, maritime scenery.

The painting Meadows near Greifswald, which was probably created last out of this group, is similarly summerly and carefree. Here, Friedrich again used the surface plane as a support for his subtle, atmospheric color gradations. In barely noticeable progressions, delicate sky-blue transitions into bright, shimmering yellow – a wash technique that Friedrich had perfected in his sepias. Although reproducing the drawing from around 1806 almost entirely, the painting has one striking difference: contrary to his handwritten note on the sheet, Friedrich did not reproduce a “cow meadow” but rather turned the cow of the drawing into the horse grazing on the right and added two more galloping boisterously across the meadows in front of Greifswald. Börsch-Supan quite aptly feels reminded of a vedute “that captures the magic of a sunny day.” (8)

All three views of Greifswald are united by a magnetic attraction caused by gentle color gradients and a few lines of movement precisely placed in the landscape, which even a fence of nets can barely diminish. Using his familiar pictorial means, the artist thus established his native city as a worthy motif.

Clara Blomeyer, in: exh. cat. Hamburg 2023, pp. 268-271

(1) Grummt 2011, vol. 1, pp. 480 f., no. 511.
(2) Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, pp. 337 f., no. 224.
(3) Ibid., pp. 371 f., no. 285.
(4) Herbert von Einem was the first to notice that the two silhouettes are the same; see Einem 1938, p. 115. For the assumption that they could be based on the same drawing, see Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, pp. 337 f., under no. 224 and pp. 371 f., under no. 285.
(5) Grummt 2011, vol. 2, no. 795, pp. 727 f.
(6) Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, p. 350, under no. 252.
(7) Ohlsen 2014.
(8) Börsch-Supan 1987, p. 132.