Caspar David Friedrich

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) became the leading painter of German Romanticism, capturing landscapes charged with spiritual meaning. Born in Greifswald on the Baltic coast, he was the sixth of ten children raised by a candle-maker and soap boiler. Tragedy struck early. When Friedrich was thirteen, he watched his younger brother drown after falling through the ice of a frozen lake while they were skating. Some accounts say Friedrich tried to save him. This loss shadowed his life and may explain the melancholy that pervades his work.

Friedrich studied at the Copenhagen Academy from 1794 to 1798, then settled permanently in Dresden. His landscapes show solitary figures contemplating vast natural scenes: fog-shrouded mountains, moonlit beaches, ruined Gothic churches, gnarled trees against twilight skies. His Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (c. 1818), showing a man with his back to the viewer gazing over swirling mist, became the defining image of Romantic individualism. He often used the Rückenfigur technique, depicting figures from behind so viewers could project themselves into the scene.

Friedrich was appointed professor at the Dresden Academy in 1824. But his reputation declined as Romanticism gave way to Realism. A stroke in 1835 left him partially paralyzed, and a second stroke in 1837 ended his painting career. He died in 1840, largely forgotten. Recognition returned in a 1906 Berlin exhibition that showed 32 of his works. Today, the Hamburger Kunsthalle holds Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog and other masterpieces. The Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin and Galerie Neue Meister in Dresden also preserve major works.