Edge of a Wood near Frascati 1824

Ernst Fries made this drawing, Edge of a Wood near Frascati, on paper sometime in the early nineteenth century. Fries was part of a generation of Northern European artists drawn to Italy, and particularly the area around Rome, by a renewed interest in classical landscapes. This drawing provides a good example of the kind of work artists produced for each other, and for a small circle of collectors. There’s little evidence that these artists intended their work to comment directly on the social structures of their time. Instead, the image creates meaning through references to the history of art, particularly the conventions of landscape drawing. To understand Fries’ art better, we might turn to exhibition catalogues, dealers’ records, and artists’ correspondence. These kinds of resources help us to understand art as something contingent on social and institutional context.