Caspar David Friedrich - Nebelschwaden - ca. 1820

Fog drifts over the horizon, crawling across the fields, obscuring the view. Faint evening light glows through the cloud masses, under which flocks of black birds scatter into the sky. Barely visible, a lone figure crouches in front of a simple straw hut, shielding itself from the damp chill. Or: Sunbeams gently illuminate the moving cloud sky. Resting, like a hermit lost in thought, a person sits amid fields covered in mist, in the shadow of warming straw. He seems to enjoy what only we can see: the quiet beauty of nature.

Whether as a empathetic observation of simple life amidst nature or as the opening scene of a horror film, Friedrich vividly demonstrates with his misty veils how the interpretation of a work lies in the individual perception of the beholder. In this ambivalence, he leaves the artist to themselves and their immersion in the image. The reduced representation is based compositionally on mathematical calculation, with which Friedrich knows how to harmoniously determine the visual impact: The ratio of sky to earth follows the Golden Ratio, thus harmoniously embedding the hut precisely on the central perpendicular. Johannes Grave has pointed out the origin (and repeated use in Friedrich's oeuvre) of the straw hut as an image element from the Copenhagen teacher Jens Juel. Unlike Jan Luyken's emblematic representations for Ethica Naturalis, where Luyken adorns the misty landscape Nebulae with two figures in the foreground, Friedrich shifts the encounter between humans and nature into the middle ground of the image. By separating the lonely figure from the background with the hut, there remains a certain distance between the environment and the human, inviting us as observers to reflect.

During Friedrich's lifetime, Georg Andreas Reimer acquired the painting in 1834. He is considered an important supporter of Friedrich, and it is recorded that his collection included between 36 and 44 paintings by Friedrich. Posthumously, Nebelschwaden was sold in 1842 from that collection; to whom is still unknown. In 1911, Alfred Lichtwark acquired it as the tenth overall painting by the artist for the Hamburger Kunsthalle. After being stolen from a Frankfurt exhibition in 1994, it unconditionally and largely undamaged returned to Hamburg in 2003.

Source: 250 Jahre Caspar David Friedrich