Nine Letters on Landscape Painting : Written in the Years, 1815-1824, with a Letter from Goethe by Way of Introduction

by Carl Gustav Carus; Oskar Batschmann; David Britt

• ISBN13: 9780892366743
• ISBN10: 0892366745
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-12-26
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Summary

Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869) -- court physician to the king of Saxony -- was a naturalist, amateur painter, and theoretician of landscape painting whose Nine Letters on Landscape Painting is an important document of early German romanticism and an elegant appeal for the integration of art and science.Carus was inspired by and had contacts with the greatest German intellectuals of his day. Carus prefaced his work with a letter from his correspondence with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who was his primary mentor in both science and art. His writings also reflect, however, the influence of the German natural philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, especially Schelling's notion of a world soul, and the writings of the naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Carus played a role in the revolution in landscape painting taking place in Saxony around Caspar David Friedrich. The first edition appears here in English for the first time.

Author Biography

Oskar Batschmann is professor of art history at the Universitat Bern, Switzerland, and the author of The Artist in the Modern World.

Table of Contents

Carl Gustav Carus (1789--1869): Physician, Naturalist, Painter, and Theoretician of Landscape Painting	1	(76)
Oskar Batschmann
Nine Letters on Landscape Painting, Written in the Years 1815--1824; with a Letter from Goethe by Way of Introduction
Author's Preface	77	(2)
Letter from His Excellency, Privy Councilor von Goethe	79	(2)
Letter I	81	(4)
Letter II	85	(4)
Letter III	89	(12)
Enclosure I: On the Correspondences between Mental Moods and Natural States	92	(2)
Enclosure II: On the Effect of Individual Landscape Objects on the Mind	94	(1)
Enclosure III: On Rendering the Idea of Beauty in Natural Landscape	95	(6)
Letter IV	101	(4)
Letter V	105	(8)
Letter VI	113	(4)
Letter VII	117	(6)
Enclosure with Letter VII: From Nees von Esenbeck, Das System der Pilze und Schwamme	120	(3)
Letter VIII	123	(10)
Letter IX	133	(16)
Enclosure I: Notes toward a Physiognomy of Mountain Ranges	136	(5)
Enclosure II: Fragments from a Painter's Journal	141	(5)
Enclosure III: A Picture of the Breaking of the Ice on the River Elbe near Dresden	146	(3)
Editorial Notes	149	(8)
Chronology	157	(5)
Works by Carl Gustav Carus	162	(5)
Selected Bibliography	167	(12)
Illustration Credits	179	(2)
Index	181