Carl Gustav Carus
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The small painting with the pensive woman on the balcony can be regarded as one of the most impressive examples of how much Carus was inspired at times by the work of his friend and mentor Caspar David Friedrich. Later, however, during his own theoretical reflections on landscape painting as well as in his executed works, he again broke away from close ties to Friedrich. In Woman on the Balcony, on the other hand, he adopted Friedrich's motifs. The gaze of the dark-robed young woman, half-turned away from the viewer of the picture, is directed from the enclosed balcony into the far distance with the blue-grey mountain ranges under a high sky bathed in the last reddish glow. A wistful, melancholy mood lies over this lonely dialogue with nature, and the setting for this is—entirely in the spirit of medieval veneration—a Gothic castle complex. Longing, as a central motif of Romanticism, is pictorially expressed in a sensually touching way. Romantic feelings come to the fore, and the viewer can empathize with the figure in the picture.
P.S. If you sometimes look at your walls just like this woman at the landscape in front of her, please check our artsy prints in super high quality in our Shop.
P.P.S. Discover more Romantic creepiness in Caspar David Friedrich's paintings! <3