"Stages of Life" ( German: Die Lebensstufen ) is an allegorical picture of the German romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich , written in 1835. The painting was completed five years before the death of the author and, like many other paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, represents the artist’s thoughts on the theme of death and the transience of life.
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| Caspar David Friedrich | ||
| Stages of life . 1835 | ||
| Die lebensstufen | ||
| Canvas, oil. 72.5 × 94 cm | ||
| Museum of Fine Arts , Leipzig | ||
| ( inv. ) | ||
The picture shows the seashore [1] . In the foreground, an aged man with his back to the viewer is walking towards two adults and two children on a small mound near the harbor. All the people in the picture correspond to five ships in the background, each of which is located at a different distance from the coast, symbolizing the different stages of human life and its movement towards the end, death.
The people depicted are an artist and his family. The old man is Caspar David Friedrich himself, the boy is his youngest son Gustav Adolf, the little girl is his daughter Agnes Adelheid, the older girl is his daughter Emma, and the man in the cylinder is the nephew of the artist Johan Heinrich [2] .
Many of Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings are not based on any real place, but Utkiek is unmistakably guessed in this one, which is not far from Greifswald , the artist’s birthplace (modern northeast Germany).
Content
Description
The painting shows a port on the shores of the Baltic Sea during sunset. In the background, at sea, three ships are visible returning to the port, a large ship in the middle is already sailing. Two smaller boats almost reached the coast, the right floats in the direction of five people on a small hill. Their clothes indicate that they are city dwellers. One of them, a boy, holds a Swedish flag above his head, and the girl next to him reaches for him. A woman lies to the right of the children and leans toward them, raising her right hand.
The whole group forms a semicircle, in the middle of which there are children, to the right and to the left of them - a man and a woman. To the left of all, an elderly man stands a little bit far from the semicircle, with his back to the viewer (which is also found in other paintings of the artist, for example, in “The Wanderer over the Sea of Fog ”). Everyone, except the old man, is dressed in summer, he is also dressed in a cloak and hat.
Five ships on the sea correspond to five people on the shore: the ship in the center represents the mother, small boats near the shore - children who, like boats, only begin their journey in shallow and clear water. Ships on the horizon symbolize the later stages of the life of two men depicted in the picture. The farthest ship, as it were, disappears beyond the horizon, personifying an old man awaiting death [3] .
There is another interpretation: distant ships are regarded as father and mother, sailing towards life and raising children, when as an outdated ship it moors in the center, preparing to complete its life, like an elderly man [4] .
Swedish flag
Greifswald, the hometown of Caspar David Friedrich, belonged to the Duchy of Pomerania until 1630, then from 1630 to 1815 to Sweden (as part of Swedish Pomerania). In 1815, the city became part of the Prussian province of Pomerania . In the picture, the daughter of the artist Agnes Adelheid and his son Gustav Adolf hold the Swedish flag 20 years after the transfer of Greifswald to Prussia . In addition, over the sea, shown in the picture, lies the coast of Sweden, and the artist’s son Gustav Adolf is named after the Swedish king Gustav IV Adolf . The Swedish writer Per Daniel Amadeus Atterboom commented on this:
| Friedrich is an orange ... and considers himself half a Swede [5] . |
Picture Title
In accordance with the romantic ideals of the time, Caspar David Friedrich wanted his paintings to interact with the audience only visually, and therefore did not want the name to give out the meaning of the picture. It is assumed that the name "Stages of Life" was given to the painting during the period of revival of interest in the artist in the 19th-20th centuries, and the original name was different [6] .
Notes
- ↑ Vaughan, 297
- ↑ Börsch-Supan, 1973 , p. 629-30.
- ↑ 100 Meisterwerke. “Die Lebensstufen von Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840).” In: TV Hören und Sehen, 29 2011, p. 130
- ↑ Charles Rosen: Caspar David Friedrich and the Language of Landscape.
- ↑ "Friedrich ist Pommer ... und hält sich für einen halben Schweden". In: Atterbom, Daniel Amadeus: "Reisebilder aus dem romantischen Deutschland", 1859.
- ↑ Caspar David Friedrich inventing Romanticism . designboom.com. Date of treatment January 29, 2015. Archived December 8, 2008.
Literature
- Börsch-Supan, Helmut & Jähnig, Karl Wilhelm, 1973: Caspar David Friedrich. Gemälde, Druckgraphik und bildmäßige Zeichnungen . Munich: Prestel Verlag. ISBN 3-7913-0053-9
- Schmied, Wieland, 1992. Caspar David Friedrich . Cologne: DuMont. ISBN 3-8321-7207-6
- Schmied, Wieland, 1999: Harenberg Museum der Malerei. 525 Meisterwerke aus sieben Jahrhunderten . Dortmund: Harenberg Lexikon Verlag. ISBN 3-611-00814-1
- Siegel, Linda, 1978: Caspar David Friedrich and the Age of German Romanticism . Branden Publishing Co. ISBN 0-8283-1659-7 .
- Vaughan, William, 1994: German Romantic Painting (2nd edn). Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-06047-5
- Vaughan, William 2004: Friedrich . London: Phaidon Press. ISBN 0-7148-4060-2
- Wolf, Norbert 2003: Friedrich . Cologne: Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-2293-0