Wędrówki młodego Caspara Davida Friedricha. Rugia

Abstract

The article looks at the context in which young Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) developed his interest in the landscape of the Island of Rügen and the effects of this setting on the drawings the artist produced during his wanderings there. This article positions itself against the current scholarship which assumes that Friedrich’s fascination with Rügen had formed before the artist moved to Copenhagen to study at the Fine Arts Academy. Instead, this article shifts Friedrich’s attraction to the island forward, to his time in Copenhagen. The city was then the centre of European research into Ossian’s poetry and the Nordic past. The author points to the significance of the Island of Møn, popularized by Søren Abildgaard, whose son, Nicolai, Professor of Art at the Copenhagen Academy was one of the most active exponents of the cult of Ossian in Denmark. Another major figure connected with the Island of Møn was the poet and clergyman Christen Andersen Lund, promoter of English literature. The popularity of Rügen as a destination grew precisely at the time when Friedrich returned from Copenhagen to his native Greifswald. One of the major champions of the island’s beauties was Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten, pastor at the Rügen Altenkirchen and at the same time a close friend of Friedrich’s first drawing teacher in Greifswald Johann Gottfried Quistorp. Friedrich’s first three excursions to Rügen in 1801–1802 resulted in many sketches of the island’s landscapes. These years are regarded here as seminal in the formation of the artist’s method. Already the sketches show the traits characteristic of his later oeuvre, and especially the mathematical structure of the composition. We need to remember that Quistorp was principally educated as a mathematician, a builder, and a land surveyor. Copenhagen at the time of Friedrich’s studies was one of the European centres of cartography, and the courses in mathematics, geometry, and perspective were considered of special importance at the Academy. This article focuses on four drawings made by Friedrich during his trips to Rügen. The author points to their mathematical precision and interprets the drawings in the context of cartographic practices, as well as in the light of old treatises on perspective. Special consideration is given to the method of laying out a grid on paper before making the actual sketch.