DE-3626212 Caspar David Friedrich: “Winter Landscape”

This postcard shows how Caspar David Friedrich (1774 – 1840)  combined landscape motifs with religious symbolism. This picture represents the hope for salvation through Christianity.  In the foreground a crippled man has abandoned his crutches and sits against a rock with his hands raised in prayer before a crucifix. The rocks and evergreen trees may be interpreted as symbols of faith and the visionary Gothic cathedral emerging from the mist evokes the promise of life after death.

Caspar David Friedrich was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins. His primary interest as an artist was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti-classical work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world.

Friedrich's work brought him renown early in his career and contemporaries spoke of him as a man who had discovered "the tragedy of landscape".  Nevertheless, his work fell from favour during his later years and he died in obscurity. It was not until the late 1970s that Friedrich regained his reputation as an icon of the German Romantic movement and a painter of international importance.

This postcard came from Anna (6 November 2014) Postcrossing.