Oil on canvas

30.4 x 22.2 cm


Inv. Nr.: HK-1055

Hamburger Kunsthalle, erworben mit Mitteln des Legats von Christian Heinrich Lüders, 1913

Hill with Boggy Ground near Dresden, 1824/25
Caspar David Friedrich

Stripes, layers, and zones articulate this painting. (1) In the foreground, a dark, brown field forms the lowest stripe; the soil has been plowed after the harvest. In the second stripe, a green, grassy hill curves upward, covered with trees that are perhaps apple trees, judging from their growth. Several leaves are still hanging on their branches. Behind the hill appear four towers – from left to right, the Kreuzkirche, the Frauenkirche, the castle, and the Hofkirche (2) – with their spires piercing the horizon line. They loom upward from a bright blue, hazy band that grows narrower toward the center, into the highest stripe – the evening sky.

These planar stripes of color also signify a spatial layering. Ravens have settled in the very frontmost area of the picture, in the furrows that lead from the right to the left and into the depths of the painting. These animals connect the planes of the picture from front to back on the right: sitting on the ground, flying over the meadow, hovering about the hollow behind the trees, and heading for the depths of the horizon on the right edge. They mark out the space just like the painter’s gaze, which falls on the city from the east. The branches on the left that peer out from behind the hill are a striking compositional counterweight. They signal a spatial continuity and an additional staggering of depth. The view continues beyond the elevation with the terrain sloping downward.

The horizontal organization of the painting is not only revealing in terms of plane and space but also how it produces zones of different times. The last warmth of the day, and therefore of the whole summer, can be felt atmospherically; the coolness of the evening, and perhaps also the cold of the approaching winter, is suggested. In terms of seasons, the field and the trees stand for autumn; in terms of the time of day, the sky, with its yellow-and-blue color gradient and the last reflection of the sun in the clouds, marks the evening.

Katharina Hoins, in: exh. cat. Hamburg 2023, p. 272.

(1) Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, p. 393, no. 321.
(2) On comparable works, see ibid., p. 393, no. 320, and p. 425, no. 389.

Weiterlesen
Bildnachweis
Hamburger Kunsthalle / bpkFoto: Elke Walford
Lizenz
Public Domain Mark 1.0