Landscape and the Sublime

Germany and the North: Nature as Scripture

Runge, Friedrich, Kersting and Dahl, 1805–1839

In Hamburg and Dresden, a handful of painters used portraits and landscapes to think about God, death and the self. Their pictures usually hold few figures, but they were carefully built from studies and loaded with meaning.

• Runge's portraits of children and his private symbolic system
• Friedrich's lone figures, ruins, ice and moonlight
• The circle around him: Kersting's studio portrait and Dahl's Dresden at night

Works in this part

• The Hülsenbeck Children
• Morning (first version, "Small Morning")
• The Monk by the Sea
• Abbey in the Oakwood
• Caspar David Friedrich in His Studio
• Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
• Chalk Cliffs on Rügen
• The Sea of Ice
• Two Men Contemplating the Moon
• View of Dresden by Moonlight

Image: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Alte Nationalgalerie · Public Domain Mark 1.0