For the Von Kügelgen brothers, too, a stay in Rome naturally formed part of their training as artists. The Eternal City had been the centre of European art since the sixteenth century. Around 1800 no fewer than 1500 German artists were registered in Rome. At this time it was here that the most important changes in landscape painting were taking place. Artists were not only drawing but also painting en plein air; the oil sketches that resulted not only served as studies but became significant as autonomous works of art. Rome was also the scene of the main debate about art. In their work German artists in particular gave shape to new, anti-revolutionary ideals in art. Instead of the glorification of Reason, they presented a renewed inspiration through faith. A small, unattractive-looking book was their source of inspiration. It was published in 1797 by Heinrich Wackenroder and Ludwig Tieck under the title Herzensergieszungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders. This book also meant a great deal to Caspar David Friedrich, so it’s worth going into it in some detail.

For Wackenroder  the artist is an intermediary between God and mankind. The artist is no more than an instrument, a subservient creator. A religious disposition and divine inspiration are the prerequisites for producing great art. The key concepts are: Empfindung, Gefühl, Herz, Seele, Geist. Artists must withdraw from the world where rationality, art and intellectual development have destroyed the child in man and with it his natural relationship to God. Hence the glorification of monastic life at a time when the Enlightenment had led to the closure of monasteries almost everywhere in Central and Western Europe on the orders of the authorities. In Rome there was even a religious brotherhood of German artists, the Nazarenes, who regarded their art production as a divine mission.


Joseph Anton Koch (1768-1839)
The doyen of the Nazarenes was Joseph Anton Koch. He was born in a mountain village in Tyrol. The 1812 painting of the Franciscan monastery of Civitella in the Sabine Hills could  have served as the leitmotiv of one of the publications of the Herzensergieszungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders.


Carl Fohr (1795-1818)
In the autumn of 1816 a 21-year-old young man from Heidelberg arrived in Rome, where his reputation as an infant prodigy had preceded him. His name was Carl Philipp Fohr. He had studied in Darmstadt with one Philipp Dieffenbach, who had introduced him to the German heritage, and especially to sixteenth-century German arts and medieval mythology. In Rome Fohr moved in with Joseph Anton Koch, sharing his studio and becoming a protégé of Princess Louise, the later Grand Duchess of Hesse.

Not only by nature but also by education, Fohr was the prototype of a German Romantic and above  all an outstanding draughtsman. In 1818 he drowned while swimming in the Tiber. For his German fellow artists he became a kind of cult figure. The biography published by his teacher Dieffenbach in 1823 contributed to this cult of great promise unfulfilled.

After his death almost all his work ended up in Germany, with his patroness Crown Princess Wilhelmina of Hesse. It consists of a fair number of drawings and several paintings that show clearly how this pupil of Koch rivalled his master. Some years ago the curator of nineteenth-century German drawings at the Hermitage, Mikhail Dedinkin, discovered a group of drawings by Fohr. During the preparations for this exhibition he offered to make this important find public for the first time at the Hermitage Amsterdam. I regard it as a great privilege that we are able to show this unknown group of drawings – including the finest flower drawings I know – in this exhibition.
The wife of Tsar Alexander II, Tsarina Maria Alexandrovna, was the youngest daughter of Princess Wilhelmina of Hesse. She had taken the drawings and engravings by Fohr with her to Russia, and they reminded her of the fatherland she had left behind. The collection was kept in the tsarina’s study and library and stayed together after her death.


Carl Rottmann  (1797-1850)
Like Friedrich, Carl Rottmann  made the grandeur of nature visible in his work. But he did so in a very different way. It’s as if you – the viewer – have become the figure seen from behind, whereas with Friedrich you are as it were represented in the image. Without any ‘mediation’ Rottmann lays out before you the cosmic space offered by nature in imposing panoramic landscapes. The people in nature do not stand before the image of landscape, but are part of it. In this painting they are included in a coarse facture in which everything fuses in light and space. Rottmann has rightly been characterised because of his art as the last visionary of German Romanticism.


August Matthias Hagen (1794-1878)
There are two paintings in store in the Hermitage which show the influence of Caspar David Friedrich in a fascinating manner. They were painted by a certain August Matthias Hagen, an artist known only in his native land of Estonia. He was the son of a miller from Wiezemhof (Vicjiems). After studying in Munich and travelling in the Alps, he became a drawing master at the high school in Dorpat (Tartu). In 1837 he was given an honourable appointment as ‘free artist’ at the Academy of St Petersburg.

The paintings by Hagen in the Hermitage are both done with extraordinary precision and a fine sense of the effect of light and sky in the landscape. But what is most striking is the role of the human figures. The figure seen from the back in the inhospitable mountain landscape has literally and figuratively reached the end of his road. Nature has become too much for him. Hagen’s work deserves to receive more attention than it has been given so far.


Leo van Klenze (1784-1864)
On 18 October 1830 King Ludwig I of Bavaria laid the foundation stone for a megalomaniac project, the Valhalla in Regensburg. Leo von Klenze was the architect of the Valhalla. The Hermitage has a painting by him of 1836 which was based on a drawing of 1830. Von Klenze probably took the painting to St Petersburg when in 1840 he was invited to design a new museum wing for the eighteenth-century palace. It is a unique document because it shows that the architect was not solely concerned with creating an imposing building. In his drawn and in his painted design Von Klenze sees architecture as part of nature.


Ludwig Knaus (1829-1910)
One painting marks the end of the exhibition. It shows what became of the dreams and visions of German Romanticism. In 1857 Ludwig Knaus, one of the most popular artists of his day, painted his Girl in pasture. It is hard to imagine a greater contrast with the art of the preceding years. Yet the theme is the same. The innocent child, who is still authentically in touch with nature and can thus serve as an inspiring example to adults, was discovered long before in the age of Romanticism. Now ‘the child’ has gone from being a Romantic myth to being the sweet little girl from next door, picking flowers in the pasture. Pretty as a picture. Strong feelings are reduced to sentiment. Romanticism is narrowed down to Biedermeier.