Observing nature observed: the art of Caspar David Friedrich

Imagine wandering through Germany. You might picture blustery Baltic seascapes, seen from island retreats such as Rügen. Or you might be hiking in the central Harz mountains, peering down at clouds that drift into green pastures and blend into brownish rock. Perhaps you’re standing at the country’s eastern edge, gazing at moonlight that gleams through gaps in the forests and ravines of sandstone highlands.

What we sketch in our minds probably follows the contours of the canvases of Caspar David Friedrich, Germany’s Romantic artist-in-chief. And these stock images have been reproduced in many a tourist guide. They’re now on display again, in full colour and new frames – literally and figuratively – to mark 250 years since Friedrich came into the world. We’re well into the drawn-out celebrations: the last of the year’s three major exhibitions, in Dresden, is underway and runs until January. Art for a New Age, meanwhile, is the print catalogue that memorialises the opening Hamburg show. But the book stands out on its own terms, its 400 illustrations accompanied by thick contextual detail and 11 masterly essays.

Its overarching theme is the climate crisis. ‘The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog’ (c.1817) is the primal man, and internet meme, of the Anthropocene. Although the environment sounds too predictable a hook for hanging landscape paintings, the editors offer a thoughtful rationale that emerges from the pictures themselves. Friedrich’s scenes may appear to depict nature unbound and untouched, but they’re also famous for their Rückenfiguren in the foreground: the men and women who stand with their backs to the viewer, facing what we also see. Johannes Grave stresses that these works are really about the relationships between humans and the natural world. Markus Bertsch emphasises the paradox that Friedrich’s aesthetic immersion in landscape is enabled by distance – spatially, and subjectively.