'Rooms With a View': Met exhibition opens window into northern European romantic artworks

The words “Everything at a distance turns into poetry” usher visitors into an art exhibition that certainly remains true to its name.

“Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the Nineteenth Century” is now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Ave., at 82nd Street). The exhibit, which centers on the Romantic motif of the window in painting and drawing, opened Tuesday, April 5, and will run through July 4.

The show features about 40 artists and includes 31 oil paintings and 26 works on paper.

German, Danish, French, and Russian artists first embraced the open window motif around 1810-1820. There is clear pattern of organization through the exhibit’s rooms, which makes it engaging and keeps visitors from feeling too overloaded.

There are works displaying sole figures, a collection of window drawings and sketches, and paintings of studios with artists at work. One room includes paintings that emphasize only the window itself and the view outside.

This northern European window trend occurred concurrently with the Napoleonic Wars and their immediate aftermath. On the losing end of these conflicts, Germans and Danes saw their quotidian life become quite bleak. The exhibit explains that this may have inspired the many pictures of bare rooms showing frugal lifestyles.

However, there is also a clear celebration of modest family life and social gatherings in many of the works. Paintings by Danish artists Wilhelm Bendz and Emil Baerentzen depict cozy daily gatherings.

The usual explanatory plaques in the exhibit are augmented by long paragraphs describing how history begot this trend. These words are crucial to a full appreciation of the show.

The impressive use of light in these open window paintings is acutely evident in Georg Kersting’s work. His works emphasize either natural light flowing from the window or chiaroscuros created by lamplight and shadow.

Caspar David Fredrich was Germany’s most eminent Romantic painter. Many of his paintings exemplify the habit of including meditative figures in the foreground of the landscape. A wall description of Fredrich’s figures observes that, “seen from the back, they were representations of romantic yearning.”

The “Rooms with a View” exhibition is an absorbing voyage into an important movement in art. A complete trip through all the rooms is demanding and may become tedious, as the exhibit is comprehensive. But the payoff is well worth the effort.