The Painter 194 7 Adriaen Fransz. Boudewijns, Peeter Bout Well on the Lake Shore | not dated | CAT 261 Detail from fig. 3 9 Caspar David Friedrich Chalk Cliffs on Rügen | 1818 Detail, oil on canvas, 90.7 × 71 cm Kunst Museum Winterthur, inv. 165 (BS/J 257) 8 Caspar David Friedrich Figure Studies. Drawings after Staffage in Netherlandish Paintings in the Dresden Picture Gallery | 1800 | CAT 30 Detail from fig. 1 What the beggar in Boudewijns’ painting and Friedrich’s wanderer have in common is that they rest both hands on a stick while leaning their weight backwards – the beggar against a building facade, the wanderer against a rock – which results in the distinctive stooped posture that defines them both. In making this figure his own, Friedrich also gave it a sartorial makeover. Gone are the beggar’s almost bucolic rags; instead the figure is reborn as a fashionably dressed city dweller with white nankeen trousers, red jacket, and a black top hat (a new accessory at the time). The figure’s blond hair and prominent sideburns suggest a self-portrait.25 Looking at the figure studies, it is evident that Friedrich’s interest was primarily piqued by the poses and postures of the figures in the paintings. A case in point is his drawing of a figure that is barely discernible in the painting by Boudewijns and Bout, as it barely stands out in the overall commotion and almost merges with the brownish tones of the background (fig. 7).26 This figure is on all fours. Friedrich copied it in his sketchbook page (fig. 8), alongside the figure of a woman with a child in her arms standing nearby. He later returned to both figures and depicted them in isolation.27 At some point the sheet was saturated with a substance that rendered it transparent. This made it possible to transfer the outline to another – loose – piece of paper, and subsequently to a painting.28 However, the figures on the sheet appear rather too small for that. Their size is clearly out of proportion with the only known use of the motif of a figure crawling on all fours in Friedrich’s oeuvre. In his painting Chalk Cliffs on Rügen, Friedrich reversed the figure (fig. 9) and positioned it in the centre of the foreground. Thus, the front leg of the boy in the drawing has become the far leg of the man looking out over the cliff edge in the painting. The same reversal applies to the arms; the head has remained half-concealed by the shoulder. Although the changes in size, age, and clothing make the crawling figure’s origins in the Flemish painting far from obvious, the rarity of the pose argues in favour of a connection. The couple standing close together in Friedrich’s painting The Cemetery (fig. 10) underwent a similar kind of transformation. The artist found the inspiration for this figural group in a painting by Philips Wouwerman (fig. 12). Once again, the original context in the Old Master painting is completely different, and the source would have been far from obvious, had Friedrich not singled them out in the drawing (fig. 13), before reworking the figures to make them his own. His particular interest in the couple is also borne out by a tracing in which he isolated the two figures (fig. 11). Here he departed from his model even more than in the crawling figure: whereas in Wouwerman’s work the man is still looking over his shoulder to face the woman, in Friedrich’s work the two are looking in the same direction. But the overall character and shape of the figures, defined by their cloaks, remain similar. The woman’s hair tied in a bun and the man’s hat or beret are comparable. In adapting the drawing for the painting, Friedrich moved away from his visual source and translated it into a form that suited his artistic vision.
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