The melancholic romantic

On the occasion of Caspar David Friedrich's 250th birthday, the Kunst Museum Winterthur is showing many of his important works even before Berlin and New York.

His paintings show barren nature, lonely people in a harsh landscape, but also angels praying together in front of a cathedral bathed in light, a monk by the sea and Gothic ruins in a dark forest illuminated by the moon. During his lifetime, some saw him primarily as a landscape painter; others saw him as a spiritual and pious mystic; poets such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Clemens Brentano were enthusiastic about his work as that of a romantic who reflected states of the soul.

He was exceptionally popular for a time, but towards the end of his life his paintings were criticised by contemporaries as depicting absolute emptiness, lacking deeper meaning and a content beyond melancholy. His romanticism collided with the new, emerging realism, soon he could hardly sell his works, he died impoverished, and art history forgot him.

It was not until the 20th century, with its preference for minimalism and the depiction of man's forlornness, that he was rediscovered. Friedrich was far ahead of his time, it was now said. Today, he is above all Friedrich, the nature-mover, who inspires many people with iconographic pictures such as the "Wanderer over the Sea of Fog" and the "Chalk Cliffs on Rügen". They also form the centre of the exhibition at the Kunst Museum Winterthur and are flanked by works by his pioneers such as Claude Lorrain or Jan Both.

Friedrich was no innovator. When he painted a ship on his beloved Baltic Sea, it floated in calm seas, unlike William Turner of the same age, who made his ships gyrate in storms hardly recognisable. A painter, Friedrich wrote, should show "what he sees in himself." Apparently he saw a lot of spiritual darkness and melancholy; his few friends described him as a gruff character who liked to be alone with himself. He usually left his monkish studio in Dresden only at dusk; he did not like to travel, and was rarely present even in the intense debates of the Enlightenment. He sought solitude, wandered out into nature and returned with a rucksack full of drawings. In the studio, he did not paint the landscapes he had seen. On the canvas he mixed trees from Saxony and Brandenburg with rocks from Bohemia; nature was material to him, was an expression of his state of mind. This is also evident in Friedrich's painting "Der Watzmann." Friedrich had never been to Switzerland, however. He had just painted his own Watzmann.

Caspar David Friedrich and the Harbingers of Romanticism runs until 19 November. In addition to his works, many works by other nature-loving contemporaries are also on display. If you like, you should also visit the permanent exhibition in the Kunst Museum and enjoy many paintings by Hodler, Giacometti and Liebermann. Everything else at www.kmw.ch.