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Lot n° 111

Caspar David Friedrich

Estimate :
40 000 - 60 000 EUR

Caspar David Friedrich (1774 Greifswald - Dresden 1840) - Landscape with a weir. Pen-and-ink drawing in gray, painted with watercolors, on wove paper (papier vélin), on brownish paper. (Around 1799). Depiction size: 8.1 x 16.3 cm (trapezoidal), sheet size: 9.4 x 16.7 cm. Inscribed "L. (sic) D. Friedrich fec." to the lower right of the lower sheet. Pencil sketch of a railing verso. Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 18; Grummt 142. From the 1820s, from the height of his watercolor art, the view goes back to his early period, immediately after Friedrich had come to Dresden from Copenhagen in 1798. The small sheet shows a tree landscape with a weir, which is a special feature because it is one of the few drawings in Friedrich's oeuvre to have a wild, rushing stream as a motif. Moving water is rare in his work - it mainly appears in his early works: In September 1798, Friedrich had drawn two views with waterfalls (Grummt 61 and 62) and in spring 1799, he showed a "Waterfall" at the Academy's annual exhibition (Grummt 99): "Landscapes, in WaterColors. Quite good - especially the waterfall drawn with great boldness", commented the critic Thomas Laye in the Allgemeine Literarische Anzeiger (no. 66, April 29, 1799, p. 651). The sheet exhibited in 1799 is considered lost today, but the description of the waterfall "drawn with great boldness" also applies to our sheet. It is no longer possible to decide whether this is the sheet shown at the Academy - in any case, it gives an idea of what it might have looked like: In the foreground, the sheet shows a view of a stream framed by timbers, which flows thunderously towards the viewer over two steps, while in the middle ground a row of larger and smaller deciduous trees stands at right angles to the pictorial space, offering a view of the meadows in the background at regular intervals. The scenery is drawn loosely with the brush, almost airily, and stylistically stands between the watercolors created in Copenhagen and the tree studies of the early Dresden years. The sheet still shows elements of traditional landscape depiction, in which the influence of Friedrich's Dresden colleague Johann Philipp Veith, after whom Friedrich also copied in his early Dresden period, is noticeable. The unusual format, in which the sides are slanted in a trapezoidal shape, is almost unique and a very special feature of Friedrich's drawings; it can only be found once again on a sketchbook sheet showing the view from the Lilienstein to the table mountains on the other side of the Elbe (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. no. SZ 52, cf. Grummt 111). This view is executed purely as a pen and ink drawing, but its conception is similarly pictorial, which is why Helmut Börsch-Supan has suggested that it could be a design for porcelain paintings. Friedrich's watercolors and sepias are, as it were, the essence of his art of drawing, in which he gave pictorial expression to his world of ideas - on a par with his paintings. - Minimally light-stained in mat opening. The lower right corner slightly bumped and paper somewhat thinned there. In good condition. Literature: Karl Scheffler, Erinnerung an Caspar David Friedrich, in: Kunst und Künstler, Heft 21, Berlin 1923, p. 99, with illus; Werner Sumowski, Caspar David Friedrich - Studien, Wiesbaden 1970, cat. no. 2, pp. 158 and 182; Helmut Börsch-Supan and Karl Wilhelm Jähnig, Caspar David Friedrich. Gemälde, Druckgraphik und bildmäßige Zeichnungen, Munich 1973, p. 241, cat. no. 18; Christina Grummt, Caspar David Friedrich. The Drawings. Das gesamte Werk, Munich 2011, p. 164, cat. no. 142, with illus. Provenance: Private ownership, Berlin, 1922; Fritz Gurlitt, Berlin, 1923; Rüdiger von der Goltz Collection, Berlin/Düsseldorf; Lempertz, Cologne, auction, 20.5.2017, lot 1505; Private collection, Saxony. Taxation: differential taxation (VAT: Margin Scheme)

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