Rocky Landscape with Monk

1825-1826

Karl Blechen

Nationalgallerie Berlin

At the recommendation of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Blechen received a commission as painter at the Royal theater in Berlin in 1824.  Inspired by the fairytale world of the theater, his compositions of that time tend to be mostly somber and melancholy in their design and choice of subject matter.  Familiar with major works of opera, theater, and literature, Blechen created illustrations and stage sets for works by Shakespeare and Goethe.  Above all, however, Blechen found his own views reflected in the novels and stories of E. T. A. Hoffman, which depict incalculable, elusive forces as governing human destiny and in which bizarre, grotesque, and gothic elements threaten human existence.  The present canvas belongs to the more impressive works of Blechen’s early Romantic period.  A monk appears in front of an overhanging rockface, his arms raised in a gesture of urgent appeal and strongly reminiscent of gestural language associated with the stage.  The bright green, sprouting trees are placed aslant in ways that mirror the intersecting pieces of rock, while a fallen and dead birch-tree appears to block the monk’s exit from the gorge.  A river hurls itself down into the abyss.

(commentary by Birgit Verwiebe, General Collection Catalogue—Nationalgallerie Berlin; trans. Thomas Pfau)

NEXT

MOUSE OVER FOR ARTIST’S NAME

CLICK FOR MORE INFO