When an anonymous reviewer wrote about Friedrich’s now-lost painting of a ship foundering in the northern ice, he asked: “are these really still landscapes, or what are they?“ (1) For all Friedrich’s skill in painting, he found “the effect more whimsical than artistically beautiful.” (2) Contemporaries might have made similar judgements about Nordic Spring Landscape. (3) In it, Friedrich once again sketched a scene such as he imagined to be found in the distant, inhospitable far north. For many, the painting is likely to have raised the question as to whether such a desolate area was even worth painting, especially as the landscape depicted lacks any exceptionally spectacular motifs.

Instead, the painting offers a view of a largely snow-covered landscape interrupted by ice and snowy expanses of water and backed by rather inconspicuous mountains. The deep, oppressive blue of the sky only lightens at the very top edge of the picture, raising hopes for a ray of sunshine that might enliven the sparse vegetation. In the endless, impassable landscape, the viewer’s gaze encounters two figures, identified as hunters by a bow and what appears to be a spear. They demonstrate that human life is possible even in this desolate region.

For the mountain range in the background, Friedrich seems to have referred to a drawing in his 1804 Karlsruhe sketchbook, which, however, probably depicts a mountain range in the vicinity of Dresden. (4) Whether Nordic Spring Landscape is identical to the painting described by Heinrich Hase during a visit to Friedrich’s studio in 1823 is a matter of dispute. Although Hase does not mention any figures, his description corresponds remarkably closely to the scenery in Friedrich’s painting—especially when he mentions “heath-covered ravines,” “from which the storms have blown away the snow in such a way that moss and sedge can be seen here and there.“ (5)

Johannes Grave, in: exh. cat. Hamburg 2023, p. 188.

(1) Anonymous, 1822, p. 1042.
(2) Ibid.
(3) On the painting, see Börsch-Supan 2002–03 and Doyle 2006.
(4) Grummt 2011, vol. 1, p. 396 ff., no. 412; on the identification of the model, see Richter 2021–22, vol. 2, p. 179.
(5) Hase 1823, p. 21. In Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, p. 386, no. 309, the painting mentioned by Hase is recorded as a lost work. On the discussion as to whether Hase described Nordic Spring Landscape, see Börsch-Supan 2002–03; Doyle 2006; and Grave 2018, p. 73.