As so often in Friedrich’s works, there is a shift of perspective in his painting Bushes in the Snow (1) that is hardly noticeable on first glance; instead, it communicates itself emotionally by slightly perplexing the viewer. The background lies relatively low, discernible through the bushes, but only just suggested and slightly hazy where the snow-covered surface passes over into the gray of a misty shroud; on the other hand, it seems that the bushes are mainly depicted from below, meaning that one can assume a lower eye level. The format-filling inclusion of the motif in the painting field is also notable. In places, only the outermost tips of the branches touch the edge of the painting. No thicker branches have been overlapped by the edge. In some cases, there is still space between the branches and the edge, but not too much. The way they are positioned is very different from Friedrich’s drawings, in which the motifs tend to swim in the pictorial space, are scattered, and bear more of a tense relation to the format of the sheet of paper. Moreover, here the interweaving of the branches creates a certain uniformity. This has led to the branches being interpreted as a lattice that separates the world in front of the bush from the obstructed one behind it. (2)

A contemporary reviewer described the painting as a work “with the utmost proximity to nature.” (3) More recently, Joseph Leo Koerner even sees it as a pause during a ramble, with Friedrich “halting occasionally before views of unremarkable nature.” (4) Koerner attributes this, among other things, to the fact that there is a companion piece to Bushes in the Snow which features fir trees in the snow (5). In 1828, Friedrich exhibited both works under the title of From the Dresden Heath I and II, which is why Koerner sees them as renderings of consecutive views that Friedrich experienced during one of his walks. This approach contrasts with a symbolic interpretation that sees a juxtaposition of life and death in the two paintings. (6)

Holger Birkholz, in: exh. cat. Hamburg 2023, p. 280.

(1) Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, p. 411, no. 359.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Anonymous 1828a, p. 219.
(4) Koerner 1990, p. 11.
(5) Fir Trees in the Snow, ca. 1828, oil on canvas, 31.3 × 25.4 cm, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, p. 411, no. 360.
(6) Zimmermann 2000, p. 251. See also Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, p. 411.