Death and Transcendence: Starting from Caspar David Friedrich’s Images of Oak Trees

Abstract

With the purpose of investigating Caspar David Friedrich’s view of art and nature, as well as exploring his reconciliation with the shadow of death, this essay will take Friedrich’s images of oak trees as the center of discussion. Methods of iconography and literature study will be employed to synthesize and analyse his personal letters and texts, the writings of contemporaneous philosophers, and existing studies. Influenced by his family’s Lutheran beliefs and contemporaries’ Romantic view of nature, Friedrich utilized landscapes with images of oaks as mediums for realizing reconciliation with finite life by placing his hope in religion and incorporating his personal life into the eternal cycle of nature. Meanwhile, affected by the theory of “Spiel” of Schiller, Friedrich’s art aimed at “das Göttliche” and realizing the harmony between inner and outer life in order to achieve freedom. This study will not only establish the connection between Friedrich’s artistic conception and the philosophical thinking of his era, but also enrich the academic study on his motif of oak trees.