Gothic Church among Oaks (1810): Art, History and Details

Gothic Church among Oaks (1810) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Karl Friedrich Schinkel (German, 1781–1841).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Schinkel was the principle German architect of the first half of the 19th century. Responsible for almost every public building in Berlin, his neoclassical buildings for the city, based on the rational order and classic proportions of antiquity, came to define the power and stability of the Prussian capital. Schinkel also had a career as a painter and printmaker in which he developed his ideas of architectural splendor in landscapes that juxtaposed nature with buildings. The theme of the visionary Gothic cathedral pervades his work. Gothic Church among Oaks combines the principal Romantic tenets of Christianity, nature, patriotism, and medievalism into one image. Here, as in Quaglio’s Outer Staircase of a Gothic Ruin, a small child is contrasted with the enormity of the oak and the Gothic ruin. The continuity of life in the midst of death is signified by the sunflower among gravestones.

Object facts

• Title: Gothic Church among Oaks
• Date: 1810
• Creator attribution: Karl Friedrich Schinkel (German, 1781–1841)
• Culture: Germany, 19th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: lithograph with tint stone
• Dimensions: Sheet: 47.8 x 34.1 cm (18 13/16 x 13 7/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1940.1173

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. Lewis B. Williams Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue of an exhibition of the art of lithography: commemorating the sesquicentennial of its invention, 1798-1948. [Cleveland]: The Cleveland Museum of Art, November 11, 1948-January 2, 1949. Published as: Liebliche Wehmut.
• Lemonedes, Heather, "Visible Spirit", Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 44 no. 07, September 2004

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.