The Artist: Carus trained and practiced professionally as a medical doctor, but it was largely through his dedicated efforts as a landscape painter that he became a leading figure of late Romanticism in Germany. In the variety of his interests, which extended throughout the natural sciences, Carus was akin to the poet and polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whom he met once, in Weimar in 1821. After exhibiting for the first time at the Dresden Kunstakademie in 1816, Carus formed an enduring friendship with the painter Caspar David Friedrich, effectively becoming his disciple. Between 1815 and 1824, Carus drafted a treatise entitled
Neun Briefe über Landschaftsmalerei.[1] He defined the “principal task” of landscape painting as “the representation of a certain mood of mental life (meaning) through reproduction of a corresponding mood of natural life (truth).”[2]
Carus at Milkel, 1833: Carus was a friend of Heinrich, count von Einsiedel, and his wife Ernestine, who lived in Schloss Milkel, the Baroque manor house at Milkel, about thirty-five miles northeast of Dresden in the German state of Saxony. The artist was invited to join them there on August 28 and 29, 1833, to celebrate the birthday of the late Goethe (August 28, 1749–March 22, 1832). Carus recounted the ease and comfort he experienced in the house and its garden, drinking champagne, walking under oak trees, and, at night, gazing at the moon and stars. It is likely that this painting commemorates the gathering.[3] (See below for the corresponding inscription in a later hand, found on the stretcher.) Shortly after the great poet’s passing, in 1832, Carus had produced two canvases,
Allegory of Goethe’s Death (Freies Deutsches Hochstift — Goethehaus Frankfurt; Prause 1968, no. 7) and
Goethe Memorial, or
In Memory of Goethe: Landscape Fantasy (Hamburger Kunsthalle; Prause 1968, no. 98).
The Subject: The point of view is Schloss Milkel’s rear garden. The summer scene is enveloped in an atmosphere of deep calm. Nature’s fecundity is illuminated by the moon, whose light is diffused by clouds. The moonlight is balanced by two lamplit windows glowing softly, revealing a human presence.
Schloss Milkel in Moonlight is a consummate evocation in paint of the duality between the natural world (through the depiction of moonlight) and the inward workings of the rational mind (lamplight) that Carus articulated in
Neun Briefe über Landschaftsmalerei. He wrote: “All that we feel and think, all that is, and all that we are, rests on an eternal, supreme, and infinite unity . . . . To us, this supreme reality is manifest both inwardly, through the rational mind, and outwardly, through nature; but we feel ourselves to be a part of this same revelation, in that we are both natural and rational . . . .”[4]
For Carus, “the work itself must express a state of mind. In landscape painting, this can be so only where the natural landscape is apprehended and depicted from an aspect that coincides exactly with the inner mood in question . . . .”[5] Taking the artist at his word, the aspect chosen for
Schloss Milkel, that is, the view of the manor house from its rear garden, in combination with the two kinds of light it depicts, invokes a deeply contemplative state of mind.
Ownership History: The first known owner of the painting was Dr. Franz Ulrich Apelt (Zittau 1882–1944 Bautzen), a lawyer and man of letters. He was co-founder and chairman of the Zittauer Kunstverein and a member of the Zittauer Geschichts- und Museumsverein. He formed a collection strong in Dresden-school Romantic paintings, drawings, and prints, including works by Caspar David Friedrich. Apelt owned five paintings by Carus, including
Gothic Windows in the Ruins of the Monastery at Oybin (The Met,
2007.192) and three others (Prause 1968, nos. 27, 355, 387).
No prior owner is documented, but an inscription on the back of the painting may offer a clue. The right stretcher member is inscribed in pen and brown ink: "[indistinct] Carus fecit; Ende August 1833 / in Milkel bei Bautzen / vergl. 'Lebenserinnerungen / und Denkwürdigkeiten' / Teil 2, Seite 356" (End of August 1833 / in Milkel, near Bautzen / relates to “Memoirs / and Memorable Occurances” / part 2, page 356) (see fig. 1 above). The inscription’s author has not been identified. But it is reasonable to assume that he or she was familiar with the artist’s connection to the von Einseidels and Schloss Milkel, which the family owned until 1908 (having acquired it in the 1760s). It is possible that the painting was owned by the von Einseidels before it passed to Apelt, but there is no concrete evidence to support such an assertion.
Asher Miller 2019
[1] Leipzig, 1831; transl. into English by David Britt as Carl Gustav Carus,
Nine Letters on Landscape Painting, ed. Oskar Bätschmann, Los Angeles, 2002.
[2] Carus 2002, p. 91.
[3] See
Lebenserinnerungen und Denkwürdigkeiten, Leipzig, 1865, vol. 2, p. 356.
[4] Carus 2002, p. 89.
[5] Carus 2002, p. 91.
