Peter Nørgaard Larsen: Caspar David Friedrich and the Danish Golden Age

When Caspar David Friedrich in 1794-98 was a pupil at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen, he met a Danish society full of hope and with growing cultural and artistic ambitions. There was a belief in art and culture as an important part of both ceremonial and domestic life. Land and landscape as an important symbol of wealth and trade became an important motive in art. Moreover, landscape became a playground for modern man’s self-understanding and self-realization. This lecture will give an impression of how Danish landscape painting in the decades around 1800 in several areas seem to correspond with topics and moods later emerging as core motifs in Friedrich's art: The interest in special weather phenomena, and not least the lonely man who is confronted with nature in all its might and violence, were motifs that Friedrich encountered in his time at the academy. In the second half of the lecture, the outline of an alternative Danish art history is presented. When writing about painting from the Danish Golden Age art history has written a lot about everyday life and the importance of a painstaking study of nature. This lecture tells a different story about a longing for a romantic feel and ideal visions among the Danish artists. A longing for the spiritual and religious, which several young artists like Christen Købke and Johan Thomas Lundbye found in the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. Peter Nørgaard Larsen is senior curator at Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen.