1814, Caspar David Friedrich, The Chasseur in the Forest -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) (special exhibition)
From the museum label:
Friedrich spent much of 1813 in the countryside, having fled the bloody clashes that erupted in Dresden as the Napoleonic Wars raged. He displayed this painting in a celebratory exhibition in the liberated city in 1814. The helmeted man was first identified in the press as a journeying knight, but a critic soon described him as a chasseur, a French soldier, alone in the forest except for a raven that trills his death song. Although the nationality of the uniform is ambiguous, this interpretation proved popular amid the patriotic surge sparked by the conflict with France. The painting's first owner was a German military veteran.
The picture was later acquired by Georg Simon Hirschland (1885-1942) in Essen. Seized by the Nazis in 1939, after Hirschland emigrated to the United States, it was restituted to his heirs in 1950.
1814, Caspar David Friedrich, The Chasseur in the Forest -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) (special exhibition)
From the museum label:
Friedrich spent much of 1813 in the countryside, having fled the bloody clashes that erupted in Dresden as the Napoleonic Wars raged. He displayed this painting in a celebratory exhibition in the liberated city in 1814. The helmeted man was first identified in the press as a journeying knight, but a critic soon described him as a chasseur, a French soldier, alone in the forest except for a raven that trills his death song. Although the nationality of the uniform is ambiguous, this interpretation proved popular amid the patriotic surge sparked by the conflict with France. The painting's first owner was a German military veteran.
The picture was later acquired by Georg Simon Hirschland (1885-1942) in Essen. Seized by the Nazis in 1939, after Hirschland emigrated to the United States, it was restituted to his heirs in 1950.