Chalk Cliffs on Rugen

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Chalk Cliffs on Rugen: Caspar David Friedrich

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Caspar David Friedrich Oil Painting - Chalk Cliffs on Rugen

Keywords: Chalk, Cliffs, Rugen

Work Overview: Chalk Cliffs on Rügen
German: Kreidefelsen auf Rügen
Artist Caspar David Friedrich
Year 1818
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 90.5 cm × 71 cm (35.6 in × 27.9 in)
Location Museum Oskar Reinhart am Stadtgarten, Winterthur

Chalk Cliffs on Rügen (German: Kreidefelsen auf Rügen) is an oil painting of circa 1818 by German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich.

In January 1818, Caspar David Friedrich married Christiane Caroline Bommer, who was about 20 years his junior. On their honeymoon in July and August 1818, they visited relatives in Neubrandenburg and Greifswald. From there, the couple undertook an excursion to the island of Rügen with Friedrich's brother Christian. The painting appears as a celebration of the couple's union.

The painting depicts the view from the chalk cliffs of the Stubbenkammer, at that time one of the most famous lookout points on the island. It is frequently but incorrectly believed that the Wissower Klinken outcrops in particular were a model for the painting; however, these did not exist at the time of the painting's creation, but appeared later because of erosion. Friedrich often composed his landscapes from carefully chosen elements of different sketches, so that a specific location is not necessarily discernible.

Two trees, whose leaves cover the upper third of the painting, frame the scenery. Two men and a woman in town clothes gaze in wonder at the view. The thin figure in the middle is usually interpreted as Caspar David Friedrich himself.[2] His hat lies beside him as a sign of humility. He seeks for a foothold in the grass as a symbol of the transience of life and looks into the abyss opening before him—the abyss of death. On the right, the man with crossed arms leans against the trunk of a dying tree and looks far out to the sea. The two tiny sailboats stand as symbols for the soul which opens to eternal life and correspond to the figures of the two men.[2] On the left, the woman in a red dress (who is usually identified as Friedrich's wife Caroline)[2] sits beside an almost dried-up shrub: only the twigs around her face are leafing out. With her right hand she points either at the abyss or at the flowers bordering it. In contrast to the men, who gaze either at the abyss or into the distance, she communicates with the other figures—whether she feels threatened by the abyss or compelled by the natural beauty is unclear.

The colors of the figure's clothes are also symbolic. The middle figure is blue, the color of faith; the left figure is red, that of love; and the right figure is green, that of hope. Thus they can be interpreted as embodiments of the three Christian theological virtues: faith, hope and love.[2] The art historian Helmut Börsch-Supan sees in the picture a representation of Friedrich's relation to death, and the threat to life by death: "clear [...] as almost never before, but at the same time also in an unusually serene mood".

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As in his famous painting, The Wanderer above a Sea of Fog, this picture of the chalk cliffs on the German Island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea is more than just a pretty landscape. Again it presents a personal and private view, with the figures looking at the sea and cliffs, inviting us to do the same.

Friedrich, like Constable in this regard, did not expect the general public to understand his point. Although Friedrich was personally deeply conservative and no critic of either society or religion, his understanding of the purpose of art made him an outsider. It was his fate to be, for most of his productive years, profoundly misunderstood. Never popular with the public, Friedrich continued to pursue "the expressive view of art," that is he continued to paint lovely pictures whose focus seemed too private, too personal to be accepted by others.

Note in this picture, for example, that despite his extraordinary abilities to paint trees and sea, the focus is not on their beauty alone. Rather the viewer is forced, like the figures, to want to look over the edge, which of course we can't.

The Baltic island of Rügen had been part of Swedish Pomerania from 1648 to 1815, at which point it passed to Prussia. With its striking white chalk cliffs, Rügen was – and still is – a popular North German tourist destination. Caspar David Friedrich's portrayal of a seemingly idyllic afternoon of seaside sightseeing is one of the least melancholy works ever painted by this quintessentially Romantic artist. Not surprisingly, it was executed during a brief period of hope – both in Friedrich’s personal life and in the political life of the German nation. In the summer of 1818, Friedrich was on his honeymoon: the woman in the eye-catching red dress is almost certainly his bride, Caroline. Friedrich himself is the figure in the middle. He has cast off his hat and walking stick, and has gotten down on the ground, presumably to peer over the edge of the cliff. Whereas Caroline represents Friedrich’s personal life, the figure on the right speaks to the larger political context. Dressed in the old German [altdeutsch] costume of the student fraternities that formed in the wake of the Congress of Vienna on the model of anti-Napoleonic freedom corps, this figure represents the liberal nationalists who, at the time, were still basking in Frederick William III"s promise of constitutional and democratic reforms. Metternich's Carlsbad Decrees, which would outlaw both the costume and the fraternities, and censor everything they stood for, were still a year away.

Despite its hopeful mood, the canvas exhibits many of the hallmarks of early Romantic painting: the close, almost overly detailed observation of nature; the dramatic framing that somehow gives the picture the feel of an enticing but unattainable view through an open window; and the intimation of a deeper spiritual meaning behind it all. But for all its cheerful spontaneity, this image of newlyweds exploring the edge of a precipice must also be read as a metaphor. Indeed, the picture is almost uncannily illustrative of the words Friedrich's contemporary, theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, wrote to his own bride in 1809: "As joyful and lighthearted as you first seemed to me . . . . frolicking around with me on the edge of the precipice picking flowers, so will you also frolic with me on the edge of this ominous time and wrest from it whatever it may offer." ["So heiter, so leicht, wie Du mir zuerst erschienst…am Rande des Abgrunds mit mir herumhüpfend und Blumen pflückend, wirst Du auch mit mir am Rande dieser bedenklichen Zeit herumhüpfen und ihr entpflücken, was sie nur darbietet."] (Quoted in Helmut Börsch-Supan, Caspar David Friedrich.

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The painting was painted in recollection of the artist's honeymoon. We may assume that the figures are the painter, his wife, and his brother Christian. Again a double meaning is apparent, and the first impression of light and happiness is counteracted on a closer inspection. The three have ventured right up to the edge of the precipice. The man on the right is relying on the bush to prevent him from falling, while the woman is securing her hold by sitting down, and is also clutching a bush while she points down. The oddest figure is the painter himself; his hat seems to have fallen in the grass or been tossed down in haste. He has crawled to the edge, felling his way carefully, as if wishing to plumb the dizzying depth into which his companion is pointing. The double meaning between recollected experience and the "profound depth" of the symbols of life is evident. The view of the sea with the two sailing boats looks like a chasm that has opened beneath the figures, framed by the cliffs and the intertwining tops of the tress.

With this daring construction Friedrich has succeeded in making a visual combination of two extremes: the plunging ravine with its view of the sea and at the same time the endless horizon.

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