When I was on my Foundation course a young lady said she was influenced by Friedrich. Her work was not to my taste. It was too teenage-girl-gothic for me. At that age the bittersweet dark romance of it passed me by and I thought there was too much cliché and not enough rigour.
On my degree course there was another young lady influenced by Friedrich. There was no gothic element to her work; the influence was more in finding romance in the landscape but again it did nothing for me. So I had a distorted hall-of-mirrors view of him, never really even looking at his work properly, perhaps glancing at a picture if it happened to be in a book I was reading.
This week, having just turned 38, I have finally discovered Caspar David Friedrich.
There was a beguiling documentary called "Tales of Winter: the art of snow and ice" on BBC 4 looking at how winter has been portrayed in Western art. In it, poets, artists, historians and even distant relatives spoke about particular paintings - Bruegel's Hunters, John Nash's soldiers, Nevinson's football match and many others. One thing to praise is the extraordinary quality of this programme's photography of the art works - looking at reproductions for this blog this aspect was truly exceptional.
It featured this painting by Friedrich, "The Abbey in the Oak Wood", and it has grabbed me and refused to let go. Formally, influenced as I am by photography, I adore its tonal structure. Emotionally, it captures that strange mix of hope and trudging bleakness that defines Runnymede at the tail end of winter - an acknowledgement that yes, everything is harsh and a slog, but dawn is earlier every day and buds are forming on the trees. There's a searching quality about it which reaches right inside me.That's all I'll say for now, but I will find out what of his is in London, have a field trip and report back.
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