337 2 Caroline Bardua Portrait of the Painter Caspar David Friedrich | 1810 Oil on canvas, 76.5 × 60 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Ident. A I 1127 classical composition, with all the energy and idealism of early Romanticism (fig. 2), has given way to a softer portrait of Friedrich (fig. 1) that foreshadows Romanticism’s transition into the Realism of the mid-century.6 Caroline Bardua became acquainted with Friedrich through the portrait and history painter Gerhard von Kügelgen, with whom she stayed from 1808 to 1810 and studied portrait painting.7 She had previously trained with Heinrich Meyer in Weimar from 1805 to 1807.8 There she met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and became part of the circle of friends around the writer Johanna Schopenhauer.9 Meyer, then director of the Fürstliche freie Zeichenschule Weimar (Princely Free Drawing School), had advised her to go to Dresden, and Goethe himself had written a letter of recommendation for her to study privately with von Kügelgen.10 Once there, Bardua had the opportunity to study and copy the Old Masters at the Dresden Gemäldegalerie, where she made friends with other talented artists such as Louise Seidler and Therese aus dem Winckel.11 Caspar David Friedrich was a frequent guest at the von Kügelgen household, which was a meeting place for many prominent intellectuals and cultural figures. It was here that Friedrich made friends with some of the students of his good friend Gerhard von Kügelgen, including Bardua and Seidler. Through her teacher, Bardua came into contact with Anton Graff, who became one of her greatest role models as a portrait painter.12 When she exhibited the earlier portrait of Friedrich at the Dresden Academy exhibition in 1810, it was met with acclaim, both for its technical execution and for the way it captured Friedrich’s personality.13 Bardua’s portraits were characterised by a deliberate individualisation of the sitter’s personality, probably due to the influence of Anton Graff.14 After the Academy exhibition in 1810, the artist returned to Ballenstedt, where she soon met Friedrich again. In 1811, when he and his friend Christian Gottlob Kühn set out on their walking tour of the Harz Mountains, they visited the Bardua family for a few days in Ballenstedt. Wilhelmine Bardua vividly remembered this visit: “On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, while Caroline was sitting at the piano […] two strangers appeared in our street. They were the landscape painter Friedrich and the sculptor Kühn, who had come from Dresden on a tour of the Harz Mountains and wanted to spend a day or two in Ballenstedt. They came to see Caroline at once, and the company of both artists was most agreeable to her.”15 The visit to Ballenstedt and the two portraits of Friedrich mentioned above indicate the mutual respect and ease that existed between Bardua and Friedrich. Bardua first took singing, piano, guitar and drawing lessons in Ballenstedt. She then attended the Weimar Princely Free Drawing School, followed by a stay with Gerhard von Kügelgen in Dresden. When her father died in 1818, Caroline Bardua assumed full financial responsibility for her mother, sister and younger brother. In addition to Weimar and Dresden, painting commissions took her to Halberstadt, Halle, Leipzig, Magdeburg, Berlin and Heidelberg.16 A stay in Paris followed in 1829, where Bardua studied and copied works in the Louvre, with a subsequent three-year spell in Frankfurt am Main.17 In 1832 the sisters Caroline and Wilhelmine Bardua returned to Berlin,18 where in 1843, together with Gisela, Maximiliane and Armgart von Arnim, as well as Marie Lichtenstein and Ottilie von Graefe, they founded the literary and artistic Salon Kaffeter, a club for women only,19 dedicated to “the entertainment and promotion of the artistic and musical talents of women.”20 From 1852, the Bardua sisters spent their remaining years in their birthplace of Ballenstedt at the court of Friederike and Alexander Carl, the Duke and Duchess of Anhalt-Bernburg.21 Here, too, Bardua worked as a portrait painter. She died in June 1864 at the advanced age of 82. Bardua was one of the few women of her time to work as a freelance artist and earn a good living. 1 See Kovalevski 2008, pp. 44 f. 2 Werner 1929, p. 152. 3 See Dollinger 1993, p. 22. 4 The work has been in the collection of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin since 1911. See Verwiebe 2019, pp. 19 –22. It was first shown at the Dresden Academy Exhibition in 1810. See Kovalevski 2008, pp. 16 f.; Verwiebe 2019, p. 19. 5 See Kovalevski 2015, pp. 18 f. 6 See Kovalevski 2008, pp. 44 f., Kovalevski 2015, p. 37. 7 See Schwarz 1874, pp. 53–57. 8 See Kovalevski 2015, pp. 9 f. 9 See Dollinger 1993, pp. 12 f. 10 See Kovalevski 2015, pp. 10 f. 11 Of all the students taught by von Kügelgen, Caroline Bardua must have been particularly talented and popular, as von Kügelgen’s son Wilhelm wrote: “In fact, Caroline had one of those natures that did not fit into any concept of class; she could not be measured by traditional standards. She was something for herself and something whole, that everyone came to respect”, in Kügelgen 1971, p. 208. He went on to write: “[She] stood out […] most favourably from all the other pupils of my father, who had therefore taken a special interest in her and rejoiced in her successes as long as he lived”, in ibid. 12 See Tanneberger 2012, pp. 28 f. 13 See ibid. 14 See exh. cat. Gotha-Konstanz 1999, p. 240, Tanneberger 2012, pp. 28 f., Kovalevski 2015, pp. 15 f. 15 Schwarz 1874, pp. 58f. For more on Friedrich’s and Kühn’s Ballenstedt visit, see ibid. pp. 59–61; Werner 1929, pp. 33 f. 16 See Tanneberger 2012, pp. 32–35, Kovalevski 2015, pp. 21–33. 17 See ibid., p. 42, Dollinger 1993, pp. 21 f., Kovalevski 2015, pp. 34 f. 18 The first time Caroline was accompanied by her sister, who was sixteen years her junior, was during a stay in Coswig and Halle in 1815, after which it became customary for the two to travel together. See Kneffel 2011, p. 34. Wilhelmine ‘Mine’ Bardua, was a musician and writer. During the sisters’ first stay in Berlin in 1819, she trained as a singer and was accepted into the Berlin Sing-Akademie the following year, see Werner 1929, pp. 66–67. Wilhelmine also wrote the biography Jugendleben der Malerin Caroline Bardua, published by Walter Schwarz after the sisters’ deaths. It is an important source not only for the life and work of Caroline Bardua, but also for the social and cultural history of the life of a middle-class artist in the first half of the 19th century. 19 See Kovalevski 2015, p. 43 The Bardua sisters were very close, living and working together. Caroline and Wilhelmine Bardua were talented networkers, cultivating contacts with many artists and writers and successfully negotiating the academic circles of their respective fields. See Carius 2016, p. 97, Tanneberger 2012, pp. 35 f., pp. 41 f., Dollinger 1993, pp. 17 f. 20 Tanneberger 2012, p. 44. 21 See Dollinger 1993, pp. 32–34.
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