[7]: 71 p.  With it he aspired to abandon the traditional iconography of Christianity in European art and find a new expression for spiritual values through symbolism in landscapes.

His father was a successful merchant and ship owner and Philipp and his older brother Daniel were groomed to follow him in his business.

Daniel moved to Hamburg to manage a branch of the family business and Philipp soon followed to serve as an apprentice (ca.

Runge then attended the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts from 1801 to 1804 studying with Anton Graff and making contact with a broader circle of figures in the burgeoning Romantic movement.

The poet and writer Ludwig Tieck was particularly influential in introducing Runge to new literature and the mystical ideas of Jakob Böhme and Novalis.

As a sickly child he often missed school and at an early age learned the art of scissor-cut silhouettes from his mother, practised by him throughout his life.

In 1801 he moved to Dresden to continue his studies, where he met Caspar David Friedrich, Ludwig Tieck, and his future wife Pauline Bassenge.

In 1803, on a visit to Weimar, Runge unexpectedly met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the two formed a friendship based on their common interests in color and art.

Due to imminent war dangers (Napoleonic siege of Hamburg) they relocated in 1805 to his parental home in Wolgast where they remained until 1807.

[13] Runge was of a mystical, deeply Christian turn of mind, and in his artistic work he tried to express notions of the harmony of the universe through symbolism of colour, form, and numbers.

He planned such a work surrounding a series of four paintings called The Times of the Day, designed to be seen in a special building, and viewed to the accompaniment of music and his own poetry.

In 1803 Runge had large-format engravings made of the drawings of the Times of the Day series that became commercially successful and a set of which he presented to Goethe.

A spherical color order system was patented in 1900 by Albert Henry Munsell, soon replaced with an irregular form of the solid.

The art critic Robert Hughes has described Runge as "the closest equivalent to William Blake that Germany produced".

[14][15] The series, except for Morning and Day, were never developed beyond a suit of monochrome drawings, four prints gifted by Runge, were displayed in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's music room.

[16] Runge's gestural use and contortions of amaryllises and lilies in Times of Day have been described as a predecessor to similar works produced during the Art Nouveau movement almost 100 years later.