Enfilade

In the late 18th century the city of Weimar, seat of the Dukes of Saxe-Weimar, was Germany’s intellectual hub. A key figure at this enlightened court, Goethe accumulated numerous posts of cultural responsibility, in addition to writing most of his works there. Himself a knowledgeable collector and draftsman, he built up for the Grand Duke a handsome collection representing every facet of German drawing.

At this time, literature, the visual arts, and music were undergoing profound upheavals in terms of their rules and practice. While the Romantic movement never had a leader as such, its artists unanimously stood for expression of the passions and subjectivity of vision; and in many cases this period saw a blossoming of drawing that made it the most innovative of the creative disciplines of the time.

Divided into seven sections, the exhibition combines the chronological and the aesthetic. As well as such emblematic figures as Caspar Friedrich, Philipp Runge, and Johann Füssli, visitors will discover some 35 artists who played vital parts in the history of drawing, among them Tischbein, Carstens, Fohr, Horny, von Schadow, Schinkel, von Schwind, Richter, and the Nazarenes Overbeck and Schnorr von Carolsfeld, driven by Christian spirituality and national feeling. Portraits and genre scenes, castles in ruins, compositions of biblical and medieval inspiration—but above all landscapes mingling idealism and naturalism in every imaginable media—offer viewers a sublime frisson in their illustration of the private, inner and sometimes flamboyant lives of the Romantic artists.