Carl Gustav Carus German, 1789-1869

Priessnitz (now the Briesnitz district of Dresden) was a village on the left bank of the Elbe, a favoured spot among Dresden painters by virtue of its picturesque location and late Gothic church with its added Renaissance tower. Caspar David Friedrich (see previous lot ) was among those to paint the church (Bremen, Kunsthalle), and Carus in his memoirs (1865, vol. II, p. 215) recalls sketching with him in the churchyard.

An undated horizontal drawing by Carus in Dresden's Kupferstich-Kabinett (Marianne Prause, Carl Gustav Carus, Katalog der Zeichnungen [unpublished], no. 804) depicts exactly the same view. Of five drawings made by Carus in Priessnitz, all of them now in the Kupferstich-Kabinett, three are dated 1822, 1824, and 1827 respectively. Based on the painterly style, however, Professor Helmut Börsch-Supan suggests that the present work may have been executed during the 1830s.

Carus trained as a doctor, and became professor of gynacology at Dresden's medical academy. Initially  a self-taught painter, he met Friedrich  whose influence galvanised his romantic aesthetic. As a member of Friedrich's circle, which included Johan Christian Dahl and Georg Friedrich Kersting, Carus expounded his theories on the romantic landscape which he published in 1831.

We are grateful to Professor Börsch-Supan for his assistance in cataloguing this work, which is accompanied by his letter of expertise dated 6 August 2001.