Against nature

In the first of a year of exhibitions in Germany marking the 250th anniversary of the artist's birth, the Hamburger Kunsthalle called its Friedrich exhibition 'Art for a New Age'. 'Recognise yourself and the time in which you live,' Friedrich had urged his fellow artists and his art met this new age with new visual forms, his landscapes flattening and simplifying the places they portrayed. In the late 18th century, German scientists pioneered a modern system of forest management that rapidly spread across Europe. Since the Thirty Years War (1618–48), which had been fought across Central Europe including much of what is now Germany, the supply of timber had been in crisis. Vast and reliable quantities of wood were needed to power energy-intensive industries that produced glass, iron and other valuable metals.