I have been thinking of snow all winter, since we've had several snow storms, many more already than all of last year. And this image and others like it, kept coming to mind. But, embarrassingly, I couldn't remember Friedrich's name, which really upset me. I used to be able to recite all sorts of information about paintings, artists, styles, etc., at the drop of the hat. So to forget the German Romantic painter of the early 19th-century was shameful. Sure, I haven't used that information actively since orals in 1998, but, well, I should remember. What is it that Ali McGraw's dying character says at the end of Love Story, something about Radcliffe grads not supposed to forget? It's kinda like that.
Anyway, I hadn't realized until I picked this image that it had been destroyed during WWII, which means that any color photographs you see are purely approximate. I love the Gothic ruin, so common in Romantic images, as well as all the nature vs. human aspects of the trees and architecture with the tiny almost inconsequential humans dwarfed by it all, and the winter/death/cemetery correlations. Sublime, allegorical landscape at its best. And though for me winter has happier connotations (more like Avercamp's Winter Scene with Skaters Near a Castle at the National Gallery, London, 1608-09), Friedrich's paintings so perfectly capture the look of the landscape in deep winter, even here in New England without Gothic ruins around.
Love is never having to say you're sorry.
ReplyDeleteMay not be the last dying words, but most oft quoted.