Caspar David Friedrich
Greifswald 1774 – 1840 Dresden
Landscape with thatched roof huts in a forest. Circa 1798
Oil on pinewood. 27,5 × 37,9 cm. (10 ⅞ × 14 ⅞ in.) On the reverse on a label inscribed (historical): Landschaft vom Maler Caspar David Friedrich aus dem Besitz des Kaufmanns Bechly a. Neubrandenburg erhalten. No. 16. Catalogue raisonné: Accompanied by a certificate (in copy) by Prof. Dr. Helmut Börsch-Supan, Berlin, dated 27 March 1990. Retouchings. [3130]
ProvenancePrivate Collection, Baden-Wuerttemberg
EUR 150.000 – 200.000
USD 161,000 – 215,000
ExhibitionCaspar David Friedrich og Danmark. Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst, 1991, cat. no. 9, ill. 30
Literature and IllustrationCatalogue no. 3: Gemälde alter und neuer Meister. Antiquitäten, Möbel, Gobelins, Bücher aus verschiedenem Privatbesitz. Berlin, Dr. Günther Deneke, 7.12.1932, cat. no. 88
This early work on wood, one of the first paintings in Caspar David Friedrich’s oeuvre, provides a rare historical record of how he began using the medium of oil paint in the years before 1800. It depicts, in the middle of a somewhat uneven section of rural landscape with scattered trees, a small shed that, like the wooden fence beside it, looks rather dilapidated. In the left foreground, we discern a small body of water with a rowboat and above it, a pair of straw-thatched huts at the green edge of what looks to be a forest, or at least a row of dense thickets. The wide empyrean takes up the upper third of the com- position, its left-hand side hemmed through with clouds, while on the right, delicate but unmistakable, a bell tower juts forth – the only feature to penetrate this airy space other than the two tall trees that dominate the picture ...
To continue the accompanying essay by David Schmidhauser
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