The tree from which German Romanticism would derive its strongest expression already appears in the songs published by James Macpherson in 1762–63, which were already famous in Germany in 1774 thanks to Goethe’s Werther, which were supposedly written by a Celtic poet by the name of Ossian. In them, heroism is often connected with the symbol of the oak. Caspar David Friedrich, too, dedicated more attention to the oak than to any other tree. He made precise drawings from nature of certain trees with more distinctive characteristics and included them in several different paintings, often with a patriotic background. Usually the oaks surround Gothic ruins, cemeteries, or megalithic tombs; often it is late autumn or winter. The trees have a long history behind them; they have withstood wind and weather, are scarred by storms or struck by lightning. Their advanced age is evident from dead branches. Friedrich reproduced these oaks with visible respect for their individuality.

In Friedrich’s painting Oak Tree in the Snow, (1) an old oak stands alone next to a small pond in a wintery expanse. Crownless and probably already dead at the top, it appears like a monumental symbol of transience. Lying on the ground in front of it, are the strangely frozen remains of a fallen trunk, looking like a mythical creature. The gnarled, bent branches and filigreed twigs of the oak create an impressive ornament in front of the cool blue of the sky. They still bear the brown leaves of the previous year, which the tree will not lose until the spring when the new, green leaves grow. As in several other paintings of oak trees, Friedrich has chosen a winter scene. The snow was for him “the great white sheet, the epitome of greatest purity, under which nature is preparing for a new life.” (2) Accordingly, the painter has not depicted a gloomy winter day, but rather offers the bright blue of the sky as a sign of hope. Oak Tree in the Snow is the most concentrated, compositionally mature version of the motif of an oak in a winter landscape, which Friedrich had previously depicted in the paintings Megalithic Tomb in the Snow (1807), (3) Winter (1808), (4) Abbey in the Oakwood (1809–10), (5) Monastery Graveyard in the Snow (ca. 1817–19), and Oak Tree in the Snow (1827). (6)

Birgit Verwiebe, in: exh. cat. Hamburg 2023, p. 282.

All translations unless otherwise stated by Steven Lindberg.
(1) Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, p. 415, no. 365.
(2) Friedrich/Hinz 1974, p. 129.
(3) Oil on canvas, 61 × 80 cm, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Albertinum; Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, pp. 296 f., no. 162.
(4) Oil on canvas, 73 × 196 cm, formerly Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, destroyed by fire in 1931; Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, pp. 299 f., no. 165.
(5) Oil on canvas, 110.4 × 171 cm, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie; Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, pp. 304 f., no. 169.
(6) Oil on canvas, 44 × 34.5 cm, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne; Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, pp. 414 f., no. 364.