Abbey In An Oak Forest

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I decided to create a watercolor painting based off the style of Caspar David Friedrich’s oil painting, Abbey in an Oak Forest, 1809-1810. Friedrich’s painting depicts a funeral procession through the ruins of a Gothic styled abbey, the landscape is snow covered and barren trees surround the remains of the abbey indicating a winter scene. The twilight sky is painted in muddy shades of orange and yellow before meeting the black obscured horizon. My painting depicts a similar scene of vaguely Gothic chapel amidst a snow-covered forest though rather than barren trees mine is filled with evergreen trees. Composition wise my piece is meant to be unbalanced, shifted mostly to the right and from a partially aerial view above a patch of the woods. …show more content…

Hence, why a (somewhat) Gothic looking chapel is in my piece as well. The idea of an abandoned church seemed haunting to me, but I also included it because Gothic architecture symbolized both German nationalism and the Romantic ideal of intuition over calculation. Motifs that were largely represented through the iconography in Friedrich’s work1. I also included a graveyard which I had appear in ruins (some graves and crosses are falling apart while others are buried, the wall around has been reduced to rubble) while the church instead, though abandoned, is still standing. It shows only little signs of neglect (small cracks and moss growing on the right side) in comparison, which indicate it has been deserted more

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