Artwork
New Moon or Solar Eclipse above the Riesengebirge Mountains
New Moon or Solar Eclipse above the Riesengebirge Mountains is a graphite drawing by the Romanticist artist Caspar David Friedrich. It dates from 1832 and is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.
About this work
Subject & Meaning
As a work of the Romantic movement, the piece utilizes pen, gray ink, watercolor, and graphite to render these natural elements.
Created in 1810, this landscape drawing depicts a mountainous scene identified as the Riesengebirge Mountains. The composition features trees set against the rugged terrain under a sky containing a new moon or solar eclipse. As a work of the Romantic movement, the piece utilizes pen, gray ink, watercolor, and graphite to render these natural elements.
The specific celestial event combined with the mountain setting reflects the artist's engagement with nature's sublime aspects, though the provided records do not elaborate on further specific symbolic interpretations or allegorical meanings beyond the literal depiction of the trees and mountains.
Technique & Style
Created in 1810, this landscape drawing utilizes a combination of pen and gray ink applied over an underdrawing in graphite. The artist further developed the composition using watercolor washes on a support of wove paper. This layered approach allows for the precise definition of natural elements, such as trees and mountains, while achieving atmospheric depth through the transparent qualities of the ink and paint.
The work exemplifies the Romantic movement's focus on nature, rendered here through a delicate balance of linear precision and tonal variation.
History & Provenance
Caspar David Friedrich created the drawing in 1810, executing it in pen with gray ink and watercolor over graphite on wove paper. The earliest documented ownership suggests the work may have been given by the artist to an ancestor of Adolf Gruis in Berlin, who had inherited it by 1939. It subsequently passed through the 1961 sale of Gerd Rosen in Frankfurt am Main (lot 60, 11–13 October), then into the collection of Fritz Busche in Dortmund.
By 1987 the drawing was offered through Galerie Arnoldi-Livie in Munich, after which it entered the holdings of Wolfgang Ratjen, also in Munich. The National Gallery of Art acquired the work from Ratjen in 2007, where it remains in the drawings collection.
The drawing is held in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where it is catalogued under accession number 2007.143. It entered the collection through a 2007 purchase, having previously been owned by Gerd Rosen and Wolfgang Ratjen and exhibited in Munich at Galerie Arnoldi-Livie in 1987.
Overview
Created in 1832, New Moon or Solar Eclipse above the Riesengebirge Mountains is a drawing by German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. Executed on wove paper, the work combines pen, gray ink, watercolor and graphite to render a stark mountain scene illuminated by an obscured celestial body. The composition balances a solitary pine in the foreground with snow‑capped peaks that recede into a dim sky.
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Artist & collection
Artist
Caspar David Friedrich (German:; 5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation, whose often symbolic, and anti-classical…
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