Synopses & Reviews
During the first half of the 19th century, the open window emerged as a consistent motif in German, Danish, French, and Russian painting and drawing.
Rooms with a View is the first book to explore this intriguing theme in European art, with its Romantic intimations of unfulfilled longing and its associated qualities of poetry, luminosity, and interiority.
Artists depicted this intangible mood with images of contemplative figures in hushed, sparsely furnished rooms; painters diligently at work in their studios; simple, serene displays of light entering a chamber; and windows as the focal point of views in their own right. Rooms with a View features forty oils and thirty works on paper by both well-known and largely undiscovered artists, including Caspar David Friedrich, Carl Gustav Carus, Georg Friedrich Kersting, Adolph Menzel, Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, Martinus Rørbye, Jean Alaux, Léon Cogniet, and Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy.
Synopsis
Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), a major figure in the German Romantic movement, painted sublime works representing nature at its most melancholic and desolate. One of his most famous motifs was that of two intimate figures, seen from behind, gazing at the moon. Friedrich painted three versions of this theme, one of which -- Two Men Contemplating the Moon -- has recently been acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The book discusses the Metropolitan's painting in conjunction with the other two versions and a number of related paintings and drawings by Friedrich and his Dresden friends. It also presents fascinating details about the moon itself -- including what was known about it in Friedrich's lifetime and its presence and symbolism in contemporary Romantic poetry.
About the Author
Sabine Rewald is Jacques and Natasha Gelman Curator, Department of 19th-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.