Galerie Neue Meister

Listen for the river first. Below the Brühl Terrace, the Elbe moves slowly past Dresden, wide and grey-green, and the sound of footsteps on the terrace stones comes back softly from the old walls. In front of you stands a heavy sandstone building, darkened in places by time and weather. This is the Albertinum, and inside it hangs the Galerie Neue Meister, the Gallery of New Masters. Here Dresden keeps its paintings from the Romantic era around 1800 up to the art of today.

The name is a quiet joke about time. Across the old town, in the Zwinger, the city keeps its Old Masters: Raphael, Rembrandt, Vermeer. Everything that came after them found a home here. So "new" can mean a canvas more than two hundred years old. Dresden's sense of history runs deep. In this city, a picture from the age of Napoleon still counts as the modern wing.

The building has a longer story than the paintings inside it. The core of the Albertinum began as an arsenal, a place for weapons, in the sixteenth century. In the late nineteenth century it was rebuilt as a museum and named after King Albert of Saxony. Look at the facade and you can still feel the weight of that first purpose. The walls are thick and the windows are measured. It was built to protect what it held.

That purpose returned in an unexpected way. In 2002, the Elbe flooded Dresden badly. Water reached the basement storerooms of the Albertinum, and staff had to carry artworks to safety by hand. The lesson was simple: never store treasures below the river again. During the long renovation that followed, a new storage level was placed high above the inner courtyard, out of reach of any flood. When you stand in the courtyard, look up. The art is kept in the air above you.

That courtyard is now covered by a glass roof, and the light inside is soft and even. It works almost like a town square under shelter. Visitors cross it, sit down, and wait for friends. Then the stairs lead you upward to the galleries. The change from bright courtyard to calm painted rooms is part of the visit. Take it slowly.

The emotional centre of the early collection belongs to Caspar David Friedrich. He lived and worked in Dresden for most of his adult life, and he painted the landscapes around it. In his pictures, people often stand with their backs to us. They look at the moon, the mountains, or the mist, and we look with them. In Two Men Contemplating the Moon, two small figures stand beside a twisted tree under a pale evening sky. Nothing happens. And yet the picture feels very full.

Here is the first surprise. Friedrich's Cross in the Mountains, also called the Tetschen Altar, caused a public argument when he first showed it. Critics were shocked that a landscape, a simple view of rocks and fir trees, should take the place of a religious painting above an altar. Today it looks calm and serious. Notice the carved and gilded frame. It was part of the idea from the start, with palm branches and symbols that turn the scene into a kind of prayer.

Moving forward through the rooms, the century changes around you. Realist painters bring in working people and plain daylight. Then the French Impressionists arrive, with loose brushstrokes and colour laid side by side. German painters who learned from them follow close behind. Step close to one of these canvases, then step back. Up close you see dabs of paint. From a few metres away, the dabs become water, leaves, and light.

The second surprise is about Dresden itself. In 1905, a group of young architecture students in this city founded an artists' group called Die Brücke, which means The Bridge. Among them were Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. They painted fast, with hard outlines and colours that do not try to copy nature. This style became known as Expressionism, art that shows feeling rather than appearance. So one of the great movements of modern art began only a short walk from where you stand.

The twentieth century did not treat this art kindly. After the Nazis came to power, modern art was attacked as "degenerate", and Dresden was among the first cities to put such works on display in order to mock them. Many paintings were taken from German museums and sold or destroyed. Then, in 1945, bombing destroyed much of Dresden. When you see an Expressionist canvas here today, remember that it survived a great deal to reach this wall.

One of the strongest works in the gallery speaks directly about war. Otto Dix, who had fought as a soldier in the First World War, painted a large triptych called War, in three panels like an old church altarpiece. The scenes show soldiers marching into fog, a ruined landscape, and wounded men carried away. The old form makes the content even harder to look at. Many visitors stay in front of it in silence. Give yourself time here.

The story continues into our own time with Gerhard Richter, who was born in Dresden in 1932 and studied here before he left for the West. The Albertinum gives him particular attention, with a dedicated group of rooms and an archive devoted to his work. Some of his paintings look like blurred photographs. Others are wide fields of colour pulled across the canvas with a long blade. Standing between them, you see one artist asking the same question in two ways: what does it mean to look at anything?

When you leave, pause again on the Brühl Terrace. The river is still there, the bridges cross it, and the domes and towers of the old town rise behind you. Many of these painters walked this same terrace and looked at this same water. Friedrich's figures turn their backs to us and look out at the world. For a moment, you can do the same thing. Stand still, look across the Elbe, and let the view do its work.