RUNGE, Philipp Otto

Runge was in close contact with Goethe over questions of colour theory. In his correspondence Newton’s name crops up , the person present in the spirit of the whole age, an age as Enlightened as it was searching. In his painting Runge sought to derive the visible “images” or “symbols” for the “all-unifying” principle not only from form but from colour too.

This is one of the many preparatory studies for the Morning by this important Romantic painter. The forms emerge and take shape in finely graded light and dark nuances.

This is a design for the Great Morning.

This painting is a realistic representation of the Christian story, it does not enter into the deeper symbolism. The avoidance of any religious sublimation in the picture is striking, there are no elements from the traditional Christian iconography.

The unfinished painting was probably originally intended for a church in Greifswald.

This painting uses the same symbolism as in The H�lsenbeck Children, painted a year before.The physical appearance of the parents is wonderfully represented as the fading of the physiognomy of human beings, as life passes by.The children are not only descendants, they are counterpart of the old couple and also signify the changes in nature. This is the co-existence in time of youth and age, to a certain extent the symbol of rebirth. The girl is pointing to a flower and the old mother also holds in her hand a rose that has been plucked, and so will soon wither. And just as the father is leading his old wife by the arm, so the boy is also holding the girl right, while himself leaning to pick a flower.

A modest mix of antique pose and Northern physiognomy is found in this Madonna-like grouping of the artist’s wife and son. The painter’s infant son holds fruit like that so often grasped by the baby Jesus.

To the seventeenth-century German mystic Jacob Boehme, Runge owed the concept that flowers can symbolize different human states. With their cycle from first bud to death, their response to light, and as manifestations of God’s purpose on earth, flowers were for Runge the most revealing of all natural forms. Together with small children and musical instruments they formed the allegorical base of his most ambitious work, a series on the theme of Times of Day. This was intended to take the form of four huge oil paintings, and to be experienced in a Gothic chapel to the music of choirs and poetry by his friend the writer Ludwig Tieck. This grand plan never materialized; the designs were published in some rather unsatisfactory engravings in 1806 and 1807, while only one of the four subjects, Morning, was developed in oil, in two versions (the larger was later cut into fragments, having failed to satisfy the painter himself).

The painting represents a supreme statement of the nature mysticism associated with the Romantic movement, and is undoubtedly the masterpiece of Runge’s short life. He began work on it in Dresden, where he had been greatly moved by Raphael’s Sistine Madonna in the picture gallery, and his tightly structured, vertical compositions have some of the qualities of altarpieces. As in the earlier Nightingale’s Lesson, they are surrounded by hieroglyphic borders, combining Christian and mythological symbolism. Individual plants, minutely scrutinized like botanical specimens, are integrated into visionary patterns. In Morning, Runge was able to incorporate his researches into colour theory, based on association and the revelatory power of light. The small version contains a passage of sublimely lovely pure landscape painting — the summer meadow on whose carpet of flowers a baby wakes at dawn.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 5 minutes):

Edvard Grieg: Peter Gynt Suite No 1, Op, 46 (‘Morning Mood’)

Runge sets the three children in relationship to the flowers in this painting. The children are matched by the three sunflowers on the left. The thickness of the stem reflects the different ages of the children, and the turning bodies and positions of the heads also correspond. The smallest flower, which is not quite open, is supported by the leaves of the other two, and the boy walking to the viewer’s right has a counterpart in the flower facing right , while the eldest child, who is looking back, has an analogy in the flower on the left. The system of analogies is continued in the rest of the painting.

This is one of the first major works by Runge which he painted to express his love for his new wife Pauline, the daughter of a Dresden shoemaker. He made two versions, the first in 1802-03 and the second, more elaborate one, in 1805; only the later work survives. Like Friedrich’s Tetschen ‘altarpiece’, it had an elaborate frame - in this case a painted frame-within-a-frame that was to be read as part of the work. Its various motifs - twining plants, oak leaves and small children - function as hieroglyphs, supporting the allegory. Though it was certainly not what would normally be understood as a landscape, it was based on an aspect of the natural world - one heard, not seen. One will look in vain for a nightingale in it, and it is immediately clear that this is a metaphorical equation of the idea of the young songbird with the human child.

Runge took his subject from an ode by the poet Friedrich Klopstock, in which Psyche - the female personification of the soul, shown as is usual with butterfly wings - instructs Cupid (Love) in song in an oakwood at evening, as the nightingales begin to sing; thus the theme is interwoven with the sound of birdsong.

This drawing may look lyrical and tender at first sight, but it is also an example of the high intellectual standards Runge set in his art. Humankind - particularly the child - and nature were to him a symbol of the cosmic relationship that governed all processes of creation and decline.

To the seventeenth-century German mystic Jacob Boehme, Runge owed the concept that flowers can symbolize different human states. With their cycle from first bud to death, their response to light, and as manifestations of God’s purpose on earth, flowers were for Runge the most revealing of all natural forms. Together with small children and musical instruments they formed the allegorical base of his most ambitious work, a series on the theme of Times of Day. This was intended to take the form of four huge oil paintings, and to be experienced in a Gothic chapel to the music of choirs and poetry by his friend the writer Ludwig Tieck. This grand plan never materialized; the designs were published in some rather unsatisfactory engravings in 1806 and 1807, while only one of the four subjects, Morning, was developed in oil, in two versions (the larger was later cut into fragments, having failed to satisfy the painter himself).

The painting represents a supreme statement of the nature mysticism associated with the Romantic movement, and is undoubtedly the masterpiece of Runge’s short life. He began work on it in Dresden, where he had been greatly moved by Raphael’s Sistine Madonna in the picture gallery, and his tightly structured, vertical compositions have some of the qualities of altarpieces. As in the earlier Nightingale’s Lesson, they are surrounded by hieroglyphic borders, combining Christian and mythological symbolism. Individual plants, minutely scrutinized like botanical specimens, are integrated into visionary patterns. In Morning, Runge was able to incorporate his researches into colour theory, based on association and the revelatory power of light. The small version contains a passage of sublimely lovely pure landscape painting — the summer meadow on whose carpet of flowers a baby wakes at dawn.