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This is the third time I have painted this amazing church. Before telling you why, let me tell you some back story. Star Date 2016: my wife was at the time an associate director of the Great Richmond Children's Choir (which she now leads). The choir toured Germany that summer. I was not planning to join them but here's the thing. They would be singing in St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, where J.S. Bach had been the musician from 1723 until his death in 1750. And prior to the concert Crystal would play a recital on the "Bach Organ," built in 1999-2000 and designed to look and sound similar to that which Bach had played. Now I can be a bit slow on the uptake, but I did finally realize that this would in all likelihood be the only time she would perform on the Bach organ in Bach's actual church. I had to go. So I joined the tour at its halfway point - meeting them in Dresden before they moved on to Leipzig.

Schedules being what they were, I would need to fly into Dresden the day before I was to join up with the GRCC. As typical for flights from the US to Europe I flew overnight and landed in the early a.m. The thing to then do is to power through the day to get over jet lag as quickly as possible. So I checked into the hotel and then set off on foot to explore Dresden.

Now I've read Slaughterhouse-5 and I know that the firebombing of Dresden by the allies in World War II reduced the city to smithereens. There was nothing left. I'd like to blame it on jet lag, but it really was my own pre-acknowledged slowness of uptake that led me to think upon laying eyes on the church "Huh, I guess this part of the city wasn't bombed." No, it most certainly had been. The church and all surrounding buildings had been lovingly reconstructed so well that it all looked hundreds of years old. Not only that, but the reconstruction had only been finished about 10 years before I got there. 

This is the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) originally built 1726-43 in the vicinity of another church that dated from the 11th century. It stood for 202 years doing just fine in both peace and war - even successfully bouncing cannon balls off its walls during the Seven Year's War. Cannonballs are one thing. Over a half a million incendiary bombs are something else. Beginning on February 13, 1945, the allies sent several hundred bombers for a two day mission which placed Dresden near the top of the list of the most hellish events of the Second World War. The bombs actually did not do much damage to the church, but the resulting fires reached temperatures of 1830 Fahrenheit causing most of its structural components to in essence explode and virtually all of its thousands of tons of stone to collapse. Some partial walls remained, and the statue of Martin Luther outside the church survived. Dresden was in what was to become East Germany. The East German government wanted to clear up the rubble and build a parking deck but "popular sentiment" of the residents discouraged this. Instead, the national leaders threw some chain link fencing around the rubble and let it all stand for 45 years as a symbol of the evil of the West. 

See what I mean?

Upon the reunification of Germany, wiser heads prevailed and the church was rebuilt. The work started in 1994 and was finished in 2006. If you look at my painting you see the edge of a dark wall on the left side of the church incorporating the largest remaining original structure. I swear to you that inside and out the thing looks like it was built in the 1700s. Hence my stupid thoughts upon first seeing it.

Okay, so why have I painted this scene three times? First off, I hope it is obvious that I am impressed and moved by its history. But there is more. Here is the first painting:

This is a little (12" x 9") oil on panel that I dashed off freehand one evening. I enjoy its looseness and sense of fun. But it's little. The second attempt is a  48" by 36" oil on canvas that I at first liked but later found irritating.

I talk about that in this Blog Entry and again in this one. Quick synopsis of the previous two blogs: my painting friends really helped but the painting remained unsatisfactory to me. I live with it hanging in the dining room, where it irks me every time i see it. Too muddy. Too two dimensional.

One day not too long ago I saw the following painting hanging in the continuing care facility where my mother-in-law resides:

The painter is Anthony Robert Klitz and I like the way he really fades the building in the background. You can really sense things receding in the distance. Who knows - maybe it's fog, maybe it's the overwhelming glare of afternoon sun. Whatever it is, it works. I knew an approach this skimpy on the architecture would probably not work for the Dresden Frauenkirche, but it nonetheless made me want to take another crack at trying to paint it with more dramatic light and shadow. Let it seem more unfinished than overpainted. Suggest more, detail less. Avoid all the trying too hardism that makes me not like the previous version. 

Do I feel I succeeded with this version? I'll get back to you in a few years. Did I enjoy the GRCC concert and organ recital the following day in Leipzig? You bet.