135 4 Caspar David Friedrich Rock Studies and Detail of a Gothic Church 3 September 1800 (left) Natural Arch in the Uttewalder Grund 28 August 1800 (right) | CAT 43 6 Christian August Günther The Natural Arch in the Uttewalder Grund North of Wehlen in Saxon Switzerland | 1800 Page from Brückner’s Piktoreskische Reisen durch Sachsen, 93 × 61 mm (image); 161 × 101 mm (sheet) Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Kupferstich- Kabinett, Inv. A 1995-6773 5 Caspar David Friedrich Natural Arch in the Uttewalder Grund c. 1801 | CAT 44 background with trees and rocks positioned on either side, is relatively conventional; and indeed, there were precedents for this veduta-like approach, for example in Carl Gottfried Nestler’s series of engravings Prospecte des Plauschen Grundes bey Dresden,15 and the series of views after Klengel’s washed pen-and-ink drawings.16 One of Friedrich’s gouaches was itself used as the model for a hand-coloured outline etching.17 To these veduta-like works, Friedrich brought a feeling for colour that gave them a painterly charm, even before he made the switch to oil painting. In Saxony, role models in the use of gouache were to be found not only in artists like Jakob Philipp Hackert but also in painters working for the porcelain manufactory at Meissen – the likes of Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich (called Dietricy), Johann Georg Wagner, Carl Gottlob Ehrlich and Johann Friedrich Nagel. Despite his early death in 1767, Wagner was still well known in artist circles and among art collectors; his gouaches, influenced by Dietrich, his uncle and teacher, display the loose brushwork and sophisticated use of colour (fig. 3) of ‘canvas painting on paper’. THE NATURAL ARCH TO THE UTTEWALDER GRUND GORGE IN SAXON SWITZERLAND When Friedrich embarked on his earliest hikes, beginning in 1799, his interest in the landscapes of Dresden’s wider surroundings was inspired by Karl August Engelhardt’s illustrated Malerische Reise durch Sachsen (or “Picturesque Journeys through Saxony”),18 with copperplate prints by Philipp Veith, and Johann Jakob Brückner’s Pitoreskische Reisen durch Sachsen … (or “Picturesque Travels through Saxony or the Natural Beauties of Saxon Regions as Gathered on a Journey with Friends”), containing etchings by Christian August Günther.19 In the two books, Veith and Günther, both pupils of Zingg, used standard graphic techniques of printmaking to reproduce striking landscape features in fully realised pictorial compositions. When Caspar David Friedrich
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