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| Caspar David Friedrich |
From 1794 to 1798, Caspar David Friedrich studied at the Academy of Copenhagen. After his studies in Copenhagen, he returned to Germany to settle in Dresden where he met friends such as Goethe and Novalis.
By experiencing the death of his mother at young age, Caspar David Friedrich had a lifelong obsession with death, God, and nature. In the beauty of the landscape, he found comfort and inspiration.
His travels, during which Friedrich made drawings of certain motifs, provided him with subject matter. Gifted as an observer and interpreter of landscape, he was particularly adept at expressing nature through the eyes of a pious believer. Friedrich's fusion of observation with piety resulted in pictures of expressive power and spiritualism.
Stripped to an essence, Friedrich's paintings are hypnotic and memorable, evoking powerful longing. The product of a singularly pious and sensitive personality, Friedrich's landscapes joined the writings of Goethe and Schiller, and the music of Beethoven as a particularly profound expression of German Romanticism.