Blechen Karl

Karl Blechen, German Romantic painter born on 29 July 1799. Died on 23 July 1840
Despite early artistic inclinations, he was trained as a bank clerk and then worked as one from 1814 to 1822 before studying at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. Here Heinrich Anton Dähling [1773–1850] sharpened his interest in Romantic and poetic subjects, while Peter Ludwig Lütke [1759–1831] encouraged his eye for the potential expressiveness of observed language. Blechen was also strongly influenced by the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, which he was able to study in Berlin at this time. In 1823 he went to Dresden, where he visited Johann Christian Clausen Dahl and probably also met Friedrich, who shared the same house. Here Dahl impressed Blechen with his impulsive style of oil sketching. Studies of Meissen, especially of the cathedral, and of the dramatic landscape of the surrounding parts of Saxony reveal the early development of Blechen’s tendency to perceive landscape and architecture, especially ruins, as allegories of his own usually rather depressed moods. This passionately subjective use of imagery distinguishes Blechen from Friedrich, whose work shows a far more level-headed deployment of landscape symbols as religious allegory.