This exhibition features twelve masterpieces (six oil paintings and six finished sepia drawings by Caspar David Friedrich (1774 - 1830) from the State Hermitage Museum's collection in St Petersburg, together with work by his German contemporaries.
The taste for German art in Russia was due to the enthusiasm of Nicholas I and his German-born wife Alexandra, sister of Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia. Encouraged and informed by Konstantin Zhukovsky, the nationalist poet who was also tutor to the royal children, Nicholas and Alexandra purchased and commissioned new works by contemporary German artists. As a result, the Hermitage holdings from this great period of German art are unequalled outside Germany.
Nicholas was inspired by the German architect Leo von Lenze's Glyptothek and ALte Pinakothek in Munich and invited Klenze (1784 - 1864) to design the New Hermitage, Russia's first public art museum, to display prt of the rich treasures in the imperial collection.
As well as the main focus of Friedrich's work the exhibition includes a series of gouaches by Adolph von Menzel (1815-1905) commissioned for Alexandra by her brother Friedrich Wilhelm, paintings by Friedrich Johann Overbeck (1789-1869), Joseph Anton Koch (1768-1839) and Leo von Klenze.
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