CARL GUSTAV CARUS | MONDSCHEIN HINTER BURGRUINE MIT ERKER, UND MOND ÜBER KIEFERN

Mondschein hinter Burgruine only:

Kunsthandlung Rusch, Dresden (by 1930)

Kunsthandel Luz, Berlin (by WWII)

Marianne Prause, Carl Gustav Carus. Leben und Werk, Berlin, 1968, p. 93, Mondschein hinter Bergruinen, catalogued and illustrated, no. 32

Dresden, Kunstausstellung Kühl (label on the reverse)

Nürnberg, Nationalsmuseum, (inv. nos. Gm 2060 & Gm 2059) on loan until 2009

A true polymath, Carus was not only a leading painter in the German Romantic tradition but also a medical professor, a philosopher, a psychologist and a naturalist who was friends with leading intellectuals of the days such as Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt. In 1819 Carus travelled to the island of Rügen, together with his great friend and mentor Caspar David Friedrich, where both artists were influenced by their experience of “Urnatur” which Carus wrote about in Eine Rügenreise im Jahre 1819. The present pair of moonlit compositions which combine both romantic ruins and pine trees are characteristic of the artist’s earlier mystical Romantic style. These jewel-like works exude a dreamy atmosphere. Later in his career Carus’ landscapes showed greater naturalism and objectivity. He recorded his evolving ideas on landscape painting in his famous Neun Briefe über Landschaftmalerei (1831).