137 10 Caspar David Friedrich Farmhouses by a Hillside 1799 | CAT 23 11 Christoph Nathe View of the Tower of the Frauenkirche from Southern Section of the Görlitz Moat | undated Etching and aquatint in brown, 167×204 mm (plate) Kulturhistorisches Museum Görlitz, Graphisches Kabinett, inv. 31344 12 Caspar David Friedrich Landscape with Ruins and Two Figures 29 September 1802 | CAT 63 tures,27 culminating in, amongst others, Carl August and Ludwig Richter’s 70 Mahlerische An und Aussichten … (or “Seventy Picturesque Views of and from the Surroundings of Dresden within a Radius of Six to Eight Miles”)28 of 1820 and 30 An und Aussichten … (or “Thirty Views and Vistas to Accompany the Pocket Guide to Saxon Switzerland”)29 of 1823, in which the father and son popularised Zingg’s style of landscape depiction in a small format, producing charming, precise images that managed to convey narrative content and atmosphere at the same time. In the years around 1800, Friedrich completed a series of outline etchings based on preparatory pen-and-ink drawings. A Landscape with Manor House, dated 12 October 179930 and identified as a scene in Dresden-Loschwitz near the bridge known as the Mordgrundbrücke (fig. 9), served as the model for an etching now known from a trial proof preserved in Berlin. Friedrich cursorily marked the outline of the projected picture field in pen.31 Preparation for the etching involved, as before, going over the initial pencil drawing in pen and ink, bringing out the contrast between the cubic forms of the buildings and the abbreviated pencil notation indicating the foliage of the trees. Similar in choice of motif and style is an etching dedicated to Friedrich’s Greifswald teacher Johann Gottfried Quistorp (fig. 10), which is very closely modelled on a drawing of 4 August 1799.32 The empty middle ground in this work also resembles areas in later paintings, like Morning Mist, where thick swathes of mist partly block the view and the mountain peak appears to float in the picture space, making it impossible to reach (fig. 16, p. 314). Friedrich was not the only artist to adopt this pictorial approach, as an aquatint etching by Christoph Nathe33 demonstrates (fig. 11). Here, too, there is a break in the foreground, separating brown-tinted passages from areas with simple etched contours. Other examples of Nathe’s etched works, comprising over 100 plates, also show similarities with Friedrich’s etchings.34 10 12 11
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTMyNjA1