Johan Christian Dahl Norwegian, 1788-1857

Dr. C.G. Hillig, Leipzig (acquired from the artist)
Acquired by the father of the present owner in Leipzig in the 1920s 

Painted in Dresden, the present oil is a majestic overture to Dahl's friendship with Caspar David Friedrich, who was fourteen years his senior. Dahl had met the German artist soon after his arrival in Dresden from Copenhagen in 1818. The two painters had quickly become firm friends, and were mutually attracted to each other's work. And in 1823, the year that Dahl painted the present work, he moved with his young family into the same house as Friedrich. 

Dahl's debt to Friedrich is most clearly made manifest in the present work in his placement of the two figures in the bottom left of the canvas. Placed above a gorge and acting as the visual anchor for the composition, this pair of Rückenfiguren (figures seen from the back) are a frequent device that Friedrich employed in his paintings (fig. 1). Far from being simply staffage, however, it is tempting to consider them as Dahl and Friedrich themselves. Dahl depicts himself on the left in his top hat. Before him, on the same side but further back in the composition, is a gushing waterfall - a visual metaphor for his native Norway. Friedrich stands to the right of Dahl, wearing his distinctive Prussian Republikaner Kappe and the enigmatic cloak that is worn by so many of the figures that appear in his compositions (fig. 1). Dominating the right of the canvas is the impenetrable morass of a pine forest, a genus and expanse representing Friedrich's native Prussia. As the two artists contemplate the sunset, they underline the palpable sense of the physical world that lies at the heart of Dahl's aesthetic.   

Bang surmises that the subject of the present work may be the Sächsische Schweiz in Germany or, based on notes on Dahl's activities at the time, that the composition was inspired by his wanderings in the Riesengebirge (see: Marie Lødrup Bang, Johan Christian Dahl: 1788-1857: Life and Works, Oslo, 1987, vol. II, p. 152). 

Previously unrecorded, and known only through a study (op. cit., Bang, vol. II, p. 152, no. 438; vol. III, pl. 176, the study illustrated), (fig. 2), Bang comments on the present work: '[The] picture is painted in the early years of Dahl's career, before he saw his native Norway again in 1826. His mountain landscapes of this period are mostly free imagination, influenced by the Dutch 17th century masters. After his trip to Italy in 1820/21 motives from Tyrol and Italy are added to his repertory. Thus the waterfall in [the] picture may be a reminiscence of the waterfall at Terni...'  (letter from Bang dated 1st April 2005).

Fig. 1, Caspar David Friedrich, Two Men Contemplating the Moon, 1819, © Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden (DIGI REF: 345D05101)

Fig. 2, Johan Christian Dahl, View over a Mountain Gorge with Waterfall, whereabouts unknown (DIGI REF: 346D05101)