Trees and shrubs in the work of Caspar David Friedrich

When we think of Caspar David Friedrich's works, we immediately think of trees alongside ruins, ships, water, sky and mountains. Gnarled old, dead oaks characterize many of his works. However, other trees and shrubs can be clearly identified from the large number of often undifferentiated depictions of trees and forests. On the one hand, they may have been depicted as typical landscape elements, but for some tree species a specific meaning can be assigned. In the Romantic period, we are still in a time that historiography will later refer to as the Wooden Age. From the cradle to the grave, all essential things were made of wood. It was only with industrialization that other raw materials replaced wood as the universal material. Friedrich grew up in the vicinity of the Botanical Gardens. Due to the limited space, this educational institution could only have a few trees and shrubs. However, his drawing lessons with his teacher Johann Gottfried Quistorp may have sometimes taken him to the garden, which was run by his younger brother Johann Quistorp. Friedrich's niece later married the academic gardener Johann Langguth. In addition to trees, Friedrich also depicted a few identifiable herbaceous plants in his work. However, unlike his fellow painter Philipp Otto Runge, he always preferred native plants. Runge, on the other hand, often used exotic plants such as the passion flower or the Jacob's lily, to which he assigned a mythological significance. In Friedrich's work, the oak, spruce and birch are particularly important. The 16 woody plants presented in the exhibition are marked in the corresponding quarters.