9/8/2023 0 Comments Waterfall drawing referenceIn Two Men before a Waterfall at Sunset, the diagonal commences with the pair of figures at the lower left and continues toward the setting sun, obscured by the dense screen of trees. Whereas Friedrich tended to compose his prospects around a central axis- Two Men Contemplating the Moon is somewhat exceptional in this regard-perspectival recession in Dahl’s pictures is characteristically based on a diagonal. One attribute of the Romantic period was the notion that the contemplation of nature afforded a sense of deep communion with the cosmos, which the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) described as a connection with “the holy fire which animates all Nature.” Dahl had already employed Rückenfiguren, adopted from Friedrich, in his paintings, but his general approach to composition was fundamentally different from Friedrich’s. When an artist places figures seen from the back within a landscape painting, the viewer is put in the position of seeing what they see, reinforcing the viewer’s own relationship to nature. His work pleased me enormously, from this man one can expect something.” ( At the Edge of the Forest, one of five known oils by Heinrich, is in The Met's collection ) In an undated manuscript, Dahl wrote that he saw in Friedrich’s landscapes “the fundamental idea of a deep, high art-yes, they are like dream pictures from an unknown world.” By including his own likeness in the present work, Dahl testified to his friendship with Friedrich shortly after Heinrich’s premature death at the age of twenty-eight. On February 17, 1819, he wrote: “called on the landscape painter Heinrich, who has recently started to paint in oil. The three artists were fond of one another, as reflected in statements made by Dahl. In Two Men Contemplating the Moon, Friedrich depicted himself seen from behind with his friend and disciple August Heinrich (1794–1822). (There are two versions, one datable about 1824, in the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, and another, of about 1825–30, in The Met, 2000.51). Dahl owned the painting by Friedrich, having received it in exchange for one of his own. Two Men before a Waterfall at Sunset recasts a painting of 1819 by Friedrich, Two Men Contemplating the Moon, now in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden (see fig. Until that point, Dahl, a native of Norway, was based in Copenhagen, where he trained for seven years at the Danish Royal Academy of Fine Art. They had been friends since immediately after Dahl’s arrival in Dresden in 1818. In 1823, the year this painting was made, Dahl moved into an apartment at number 33 An der Elbe in the city of Dresden, capital of the east German state of Saxony, becoming Friedrich’s upstairs neighbor. The man to his right, though depicted from behind-a Rückenfigur in German-is the painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), identifiable by his old-German style hat and cape. The figure on the left, shown wearing a top hat and overcoat, is most likely a self-portrait by Dahl. They look across a gorge toward a majestic waterfall, having paused together to contemplate this untamed scenery at sunset. Two men stand at a precipice beside towering spruce trees.
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