Painting of two standing together, looking at the moon before a leaning tree.
Exhibition

Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature

February 8–May 11, 2025
Free with Museum admission

Audio Guide

Hear new perspectives on Friedrich’s life and work.
This tour runs approximately 40 minutes.


Cover Image for 370. Introduction

370. Introduction

Welcome to Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature

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NARRATOR: Welcome to Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature. This is the first comprehensive exhibition in the United States dedicated to the work of this great German Romantic landscape painter.

ALISON HOKANSON: At the core of Romanticism is this celebration of the individual self with the capacity to reflect and to grow and to change. That understanding of how we relate to the rest of the world does have a beginning, and it's in the time and moment when Friedrich is working.

ANDREA WULF: The self ruled the world not kings or queens anymore. And that's something that then becomes very important for the Romantics who put the self really at center stage.

This is a time when steam engines are beginning to increase productivity. This is a time when clocks, the tick tock tick of a clock, suddenly divides your day, not sun and moon anymore. So, this is an increasingly mechanical world. And the young romantics are really turning against this kind of disenchantment.

JORDAN B. COOPER: There is this emphasis on feeling or experience here. There is also this focus on the experience of the sublime.

KIM STANLEY ROBINSON: I do think that's one thing that Friedrich was trying to reach toward, to get to what the sublime feels like.

MARIE HOWE: Whenever we say nature, we put ourselves outside it. And we are not, we are nature.

NARRATOR: In each gallery, you will find one or two tour stops, each delving into themes present in Friedrich’s life and work. You’ll hear from artists, writers, scholars, and more.

We invite you to enjoy the exhibition at your own pace as you listen along.

JOANNA SHEERS SEIDENSTEIN: I hope that people let their mind wander. Friedrich’s all about wandering and his pictures, they’re just so contemplative. It allows for this really deep interior experience. His work speaks to the soul.

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Music: Liszt, Consolations, S. 172: No. 3, Lento placido, performed by Constantin Stephan (piano) is licensed under CC-BY-4.0

    Playlist

  1. 370. Introduction
  2. 371. Forging his Path (Self Portrait, 1800)
  3. 372. Nature and Faith (The Cross in the Mountains, 1806)
  4. 373. Monk by the Sea, 1808–10
  5. 374. Alone Together (Two Men Contemplating the Moon, ca. 1825–30)
  6. 375. Home and Away (Moonrise over the Sea, 1822)
  7. 376. Nature’s Cycles (Castle Ruins at Teplitz, 1828)
  8. 377. Mountain Time (The Watzmann, 1824–25)
  9. 378. Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, ca. 1817
  10. 379. Clarity of Vision (The Stages of Life, ca. 1834)
  11. 380. The Great Beyond

Contributors


Alison Hokanson

Alison Hokanson is curator of European Paintings and co-curator of Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature. She specializes in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Central and Northern European and British painting.

Joanna Sheers Seidenstein

Joanna Sheers Seidenstein is assistant curator of Drawings and Prints and co-curator of Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature. She specializes in Northern European drawings and prints.

Andrea Wulf

Andrea Wulf is a historian and writer of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World (2015) and most recently Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self (2022).

Jordan B. Cooper

Jordan B. Cooper is an ordained Lutheran pastor, Professor of Lutheran Dogmatics at the American Lutheran Theological Seminary, and a campus minister at Cornell University.

Alua Arthur

Alua Arthur is the founder of Going with Grace, a death doula training and end-of-life support organization. She is also the author of Briefly Perfectly Human (2024).

Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson is a science fiction writer, whose latest novel is The Ministry for the Future (2020). He is also the author of The High Sierra: A Love Story (2022), a historical and personal exploration of the Sierra Nevadas.

Marie Howe

Marie Howe is a poet and author, most recently, of New and Selected Poems (2024). She is currently a chancellor of the American Academy of Poets and poet-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.



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Dates
February 8–May 11, 2025
Free with Museum admission
Painting of two standing together, looking at the moon before a leaning tree.