Abbey among Oak Trees (1809/1810) by Caspar David FriedrichAlte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Art can change the nature of a place. The real-world scenes of some of history’s most famous artworks have since become sites of spooky significance. Whether through their association with a dark and mysterious artist, or because of their depiction in a particularly atmospheric image, some landscapes are, for one reason or another, haunted by their aesthetic or historical past.
American Gothic (1930) by Grant Wood (American, 1891-1942)The Art Institute of Chicago
American Gothic - Grant Wood
Few paintings are as famed or as feared as American Gothic (1930). Grant Wood’s rustic portrait is infused with a vague sense of heartland darkness. Generations have felt a strange unease in the ambiguous relationship between the two figures and their horror-movie setting.
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The real life Dibble House still stands today in Mt. Vernon, Iowa.
The Scream (1910) by Edvard MunchThe Munch Museum, Oslo
The Scream - Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch’s iconic picture of human despair has become one of history’s most famous paintings. Its plunging perspective and fiery palette gave expression to modern humanity’s anguish and anxiety.
The intense landscape through which the three figures walk has been identified as a fjord above Oslo, the view being from a road called Valhallveien.
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Munch exaggerated the angles of the road to give his painting great drama, but the place is recognizable, and marked in real life by a plaque.
A Burial at Ornans (1849 - 1850) by Gustave CourbetMusée d’Orsay, Paris
The Burial at Ornans - Gustave Courbet
Gustave Courbet’s Burial at Ornans (1849-50) is set in the rural French town of Ornans where the painter was born. The landscape accurately depicts the craggy, low-Alpine features of the Franche-Comte countryside, and each figure is modelled on a real-life inhabitant of the town. Courbet was inspired to paint this scene after the death of his beloved Grandfather Jean-Antoine Oudot in 1849.
But at the extreme left of the painting, his grandfather himself appears, looking down the length of the casket to the open grave. Is he a ghostly attendant at his own funeral?
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Parts of the sleepy town of Ornans still look much as they would have done during Courbet’s lifetime, and the cliffs of the Via Ferrata, overlooking the scene from the top of Roche du Mont, are instantly recognizable.
The Menin Road (1919) by Nash, PaulImperial War Museums
The Menin Road - Paul Nash
As a journalistic painter reporting from the front-line of two world wars, Paul Nash was exposed to some of history’s grisliest battlegrounds. His response was to paint the landscapes in a surreal tone, the violence enacted on these fields transforming them into horrific, unnatural zones.
He painted The Menin Road (1919) to record the horrors of the Ypres offensives in Belgium.
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Though it no longer bears the surreal atmosphere of Nash’s painting, Flanders still bears the weight of its violent past.
Abbey among Oak Trees (1809/1810) by Caspar David FriedrichAlte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
The Abbey in the Oakwood - Caspar David Friedrich
Friedrich's landscapes are often heavily contrasted, shadow and light throwing figures into sharp relief. This refines details to simple, powerful shapes, allowing them to function as symbols or allegories.
Here the tendrils of leafless trees give us a haunting, fractured sky.
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The eerie mood that Friedrich captured still hangs over the real-life site.
