Germany and the Arts
Seventy-five works from the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin are currently on display in Spirit of an Age at the National Gallery of Art. The exhibition highlights 19th-century German paintings by 35 artists, surveys the period from romanticism to expressionism, and offers a brief history of Germany and the arts.
The Alte Nationalgalerie was designed by Friedrich August Stüler in 1865 and opened to the public in 1876 to house the Prussian king's collection of paintings and sculpture. The works on display at the National Gallery are mostly by artists rarely seen outside of Germany.
The exhibition offers us many things from the high drama of Friedrich's landscapes, like the magnificent “Moonrise over the Sea” (1822, pictured above), to the startling expressionism of Max Beckmann (1884-1950) and Lovis Corinth (1856-1925). Impressionist pieces offset the exhibition's emphasis on German painting but represent a more progressive side to the Alte Nationalgalerie's acquisitions of the time. Impressionist pieces include works by such staple French artists as Cézanne, Courbet, Manet, and Monet.
The First Paintings of Industry
In the age of Goethe, Heine, Beethoven, and Brahms, Germany had little need for the visual arts yet the works on display here represent significant talent. Perhaps the most interesting works on view are those representing the Nazarenes and the late romantics. While the Italian artists are by far the most well known for their religious painting, in 1809 Friedrich Overbeck (1789-1869) and Franz Pforr (1788-1812) joined four other German art students in Vienna to form the Lukasbrüder, or Brotherhood of Saint Luke, the patron saint of painting. Later joined by Peter Cornelius (1783-1867) in Rome, the group, traditionally known as the Nazarenes, lived a devout, communal life in the Franciscan Monastery of Sant'Isadoro. As the catalogue notes, the group sought to influence modern painting with characteristics of renaissance Italy and northern Europe, namely with purity in form and spiritual values.
Overbeck's portrait “The Painter Franz Pforr” does just that. Here we see the artist Pforr seated in a window. Pictured in the background is a Madonna-like figure in prayer, and a church steeple. Overbeck combines an early Renaissance setting with the painterly style of the 15th century. Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld's “The Annunciation” (1820) is also a rare beauty. Here we see that Schnorr was inspired by Fra Angelico's frescoes in San Marco in Florence.
The years between the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and the revolutions of 1848, known as the Biedermeier era, were times of peace, prosperity, and innovation in Berlin. The classical architecture, elegant boulevards, and technological feats such as the giant granite bowl in the Berlin Lustgarten (pictured below), were presented by realist painters Eduard Gärtner (1801-1877) and Johann Erdmann Hummel (1769-1852). Here the paintings are full of light and optimism. Other artists from the period — Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (1793-1865), Franz Krüger (1797-1857), Carl Spitzweg (1808-1885) — chose to depict rural landscapes, genre subjects, and portraits of the newly optimistic middle class with close observation.
And then there is Menzel, one of the most significant and progressive realist painters in Germany. Ten of his canvases are on display, most of which are small, intimate studies of Berlin landscapes and bourgeois interiors, such as the “Balcony Room” (1845), and the “Berlin-Potsdam Railway” (1847). You will also find here one of the greatest images of the industrial revolution of the 19th century, “The Iron-rolling Mill” (1875). As the Gallery notes, Menzel traveled to the massive iron mills of Upper Silesia in 1872 to study the manufacturing processes. Countless drawings of men and machinery, Menzel's works are said to be the first paintings of industry.
Many German artists of the second half of the 19th-century made their way to Italy. Like Goethe and Heine, both avid travelers of Italy, Anselm Feuerbach (1829-1880) and Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901) had made their own Italian journeys with a group of artists knows as the “German Romans.” One lovely picture on display, “Landscape in the Campagna” (c. 1859) by Böcklin evolved from sketches the artist made of the seven years he spent in Rome.
Vital Center for Art
The final two sections of the exhibition concentrate on the end of the century and the influence of French impressionism and the formation of secession movements. Here we see how William Leibl (1844-1900), Hans Thoma (1839-1924), and Wilhelm Trübner (1851-1917) translated the style of French painters such as Gustave Courbet and the early impressionists into their own new style, one that they found free from the restraints of academic painting. During the 1890's small groups of artists formed independent societies free from the control of the academy. The various societies held exhibitions — secession exhibitions — that were largely venues to display progressive art. Led by Max Liebermann (1847-1935), a wave of masters emerged from the independent secession societies, including Max Slevogt (1868-1932), Max Beckmann, and Lovis Corinth. Here we find painted landscapes, portraits, and scenes of urban life influenced by the Dutch painter Frans Hals. The exhibition closes with early works by Beckmann, including “Small Deathbed Scene” (1906, pictured above), heavily influenced by the fear, suffering, and death found in works by Edvard Munch.
Spirit of an Age offers Americans a rare opportunity to study the works of several significant German artists. It is also a timely reminder of a period when Berlin was a vital center for art.
Art Notes
Spirit of an Age will remain on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. through September 3, 2001. The Alte Nationalgalerie will reopen in December 2001, when the museum will display its complete collection of work.
All images are courtesy of the National Gallery of Art:
Caspar David Friedrich, “Moonrise over the Sea,” 1822, oil on canvas, Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
Friedrich Overbeck, “The Painter Franz Pforr,” c. 1810 (reworked 1865?), oil on canvas, Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
Johann Erdmann Hummel, “The Granite Bowl in the Berlin Lustgarten,” 1831, oil on canvas, Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
Max Beckmann, “'Small' Deathbed Scene,” 1906, oil on canvas, Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
(This article is reprinted with permission from National Review Online.)
