Speaker: Simon Kelly
Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art
Saint Louis Art Museum

Hello, I’m Simon Kelly, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Saint Louis Art Museum. The picture that you are looking at, Sunburst in the Riesengebirge, is by Caspar David Friedrich, the leading painter in the German Romantic movement, which flourished in the early decades of the 19th century. Romanticism was a complex historical movement. One of its most important elements was the new significance that it gave to landscape painting, since it emphasized the individual’s subjective and emotional response to nature. Friedrich’s picture dramatically captures a mountain landscape as sun breaks through the stormy clouds and illuminates the distant hills. Another expanse of bluish peaks is visible at back left, while a tiny hut at top left suggests a human presence. Friedrich evokes the effects of changing weather conditions as if he had painted this work outdoors. Yet the development of this picture is in fact more complex and arguably more interesting. Friedrich’s painting is a work of memory made 25 years after he visited the Riesengebirge Mountains on a hiking trip in 1810. These mountains, also known as the Giant Mountains, today border the Czech Republic and Poland, and they were close to the town of Dresden in southern Germany, where Friedrich spent most of his life.

Although his work is ostensibly naturalistic, Friedrich developed a personal language of symbolism in his painting that is clearly evident in Sunburst in the Riesengebirge. The fir in the foreground thus symbolizes vitality, while the dead tree alongside is a reminder of human mortality. The sunburst of light in the distance represents the hope for eternity, a hope that was central to Friedrich, who was a deeply religious man and saw landscape painting as a way of expressing his Christian beliefs. This picture gains extra poignancy when we understand that Friedrich knew his health was failing at this time. In 1835, indeed, he suffered a stroke, which largely curtailed his painting production. This is probably one of his last pictures.

Sunburst in the Riesengebirge is a recent purchase by the Museum and fills a long-standing gap in the Museum’s collection. Friedrich’s works are rare, and there are only four other paintings by the artist in American museums. His work is all the more important for our collection since it had a deep impact on later generations of German artists right up until the present day. Perhaps most notably, Gerhard Richter has often acknowledged the inspiration that he has drawn from Friedrich’s work.