The Abbey in the Oakwood

Abbey in the Oak Forest is a painting by Caspar David Friedrich. It was built 1808-1810 in Dresden and was issued along with the image The Monk by the Sea at the Berlin Academy exhibition of 1810. At the request of the artist, the images were not side by side but on the other suspended. The Monk by the Sea should hang over the Abbey in the Oak Forest. After the exhibition, the two images of King Friedrich Wilhelm III were purchased for his collection. Today, the paintings are next to each other in the Old National Gallery in Berlin.

Formation

The painting was created in a time first public recognition and success for Frederick. Mainly, the discussion about the Děčínská altar had made him known to a wider audience. The image evoked both appreciation and rejection.

Although Frederick images depicting natural landscapes, he composed and painted it in his studio. However, for this he used resulting outdoor sketches. He took these individual elements and put them back together, in order to achieve a certain mood or a feeling in the viewer. The Abbey in the Oak Forest, he used studies of the monastery Eldena, which reappears in other pictures of Frederick. Likewise, the trees are in a slightly different form on various other works again.

The Abbey in the Oak Forest Friedrich may have begun after a stay in Rügen in Neubrandenburg in June 1809. Shortly before the Academy exhibition in Berlin in September 1810 described Carl Friedrich Frommann the image with the setting sun and crescent moon, after he had seen the almost finished image on September 24, 1810.

Motif

In the middle you can see a number of monks in the direction of a gothic church portal go, some of them carrying a coffin. The procession is lit only by two candles lights. On the snow-covered ground in foreground an open grave and several crosses can still be seen. The lower third of the image is dark. The from the right in the picture translucent sun illuminates only the upper part of the portal and the standing around the ruins bare oaks. In the sky, the crescent of the moon can be seen rising. In the tracery of church window sits an owl.