Couldn’t A exemplify the narrative details of Dutch painting, B the radicality of Color Field Painting, and C the lightness of Impressionism? “Could” –, in reality they are all equally modern! In fact, figures A, B, and C are from the same painting:

Friedrich’s The Solitary Tree was commissioned by the Berlin banker Joachim H.W. Wagener, who requested a pair of pictures on the theme of the Times of Day. Alluding to medieval panel painting, it is also referred to as a diptych.

Only a juxtaposition of the two pictures reveals their actual content: The Solitary Tree radiates the pristine freshness of an early morning, while Moonrise over the Sea is suffused with the solemn stillness of a day that is drawing to a close. In these pictures, the landscape becomes the bearer of (subjective) impressions and emotions.

Caspar David Friedrich was quickly forgotten after his death in 1840. But the turn of the 20th century saw significant change – in art generally, and in the public perception of Friedrich’s legacy. Emerging now was a radically new kind of art.

At that time, Friedrich was “rediscovered” – at the Jahrhundertausstellung deutscher Kunst (1775–1875) (German Centenary Exhibition) at the Nationalgalerie (National Gallery of Art) in Berlin. Although excluding contemporary art, the exhibition sought to explain, enhance, and popularize the art of the present moment – especially Impressionism – by tracing its origins and evolution in recent art history.

In 1906, art lovers, critics, and curators were impressed in particular by Friedrich’s view of nature, and by the use of light and color in his paintings.

After visiting the exhibition in 1906, the art historian Ferdinand Laban wrote about Friedrich:

Unquestionably, the “reality” we encounter in Friedrich’s pictures is partially the result of his habit of frequent sketching from nature – when he would translate his observations directly into his drawings. Friedrich also used such drawings from nature in the painting The Solitary Tree.

Friedrich’s habit of executing drawings directly from nature prompted critics and curators to acclaim him as a precursor of plein air painting. This process, in which artists paint outdoors (French: en plein air), emerged in England and France during the mid-19th century. It particularly influenced Impressionism.

The curator Hugo von Tschudi, director of Berlin’s Nationalgalerie, wrote in the exhibition catalogue:

In the accompanying exhibition catalogue, Julius Meier-Graefe composed a brief text for each exhibited work. For the color scheme of The Solitary Tree, he found these eloquent words:

Art critics too emphasized the special quality of light and color in Friedrich’s paintings. In 1906, one critic wrote enthusiastically about The Solitary Tree (then still under the title Harz Landscape):

Modeled on major crowd-pulling fairs and exhibitions in the French capital, the Berlin exhibition was designed to provide an overview of 100 years of art in Germany. Especially artists who diverged from academic taste, or who were less successful or less familiar, were brought now to the public’s attention.

The period 1775–1875 must have been chosen quite consciously in order to avoid offending the establishment of the Berlin art scene around 1900.

As a counterpole to the still dominant model of history painting, with its emphasis on thematic content, the curators, with their selection of works, proposed a different interpretation of art history. They searched through a century of German art for developments in art according to painterly criteria such as surface, color, and light.

The great discovery of the exhibition was Caspar David Friedrich. Presented were altogether 93 of his paintings and drawings. The 36 paintings hung in two cabinets on the second story of the Nationalgalerie, with 57 drawings displayed in the galleries of the Neues Museum nearby.

The curators Lichtwark and Tschudi first became aware of Friedrich through the Norwegian art historian Andreas Aubert. He was the first to publish material on Friedrich in 1893, the chapter on Friedrich only appeared in German in 1895.

Revolutionary as well was the style of presentation: the pictures were hung in just two rows, one above the other, on white backgrounds. Was this perhaps the birth of the so-called white cube?!

In a letter, Alfred Lichtwark, director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, characterizes the enormous impact of Friedrich’s pictures on 20th-century viewers:

Numerous art critics celebrated the rediscovered artists. Some, meanwhile, sharply criticized the curatorial concept (anonymously):

That said, however, the same challenge preoccupies curators and collectors even today. Now as ever, one criterion for a purchase or an exhibition is the question: How “modern”, how contemporary is a given work of art? And what does it tell us about ourselves today?

The internet and social media are further expanding the established canon, giving a hearing to unheard voices, enabling alternative views – and influencing our perspectives of what art can be.

With the Centenary Exhibition of German Art, the curators achieved their goal: to reexamine a century of German art with impulses from contemporary art – Impressionism in particular – and to break up the art canon of their time with the positions presented. These sensational discoveries from an earlier era have long since become part of the Western museum canon – not just in Germany. The pictorial worlds of the once forgotten Caspar David Friedrich are now world-famous.