Casper David Friedrich (1774-1840) was born in 1774 in Germany and he influenced the Romantic movement. He was one of his parents’ ten children. He received encouragement to sketch from an early age. Friedrich is considered one of the most prominent landscape artists from Germany. He is rated among some of the famous painters such as Thomas Cole, Paul Cezanne, Camille Pissarro, John Constable, Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh. Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten, Luthern theologian and pastor was a major source of influence on Friedrich. His favourite subjects were Gothic ruins, night skies and early morning light. He painted over 500 works in his lifetime. Some of his famous paintings were ‘Wanderer above the Sea of Fog’ and ‘Cross in the Mountains’.

His Early Life

Friedrich was born on the Baltic Sea Coast, in Griefswald, Swedish Pomerania in Germany. He lost many of his family members during his childhood, his mother, two sisters and one young brother before he turned 14. He studied art under the tutelage of artist Johann Gottfried Quistorp at the University of Greifswald. Later, Friedrich settled down in Dresden and entered the Academy of Copenhagen and studied under artists such as Christian August Lorentzen and Jens Juel. In 1805, he won the top prize at the Weimar competition and established himself as an up and coming painter.

His Major Artworks

Before Friedrich, very few western artists were creating landscape painting. They never treated landscape as a major genre subject for painting. ‘Cross in the Mountains’ was Friedrich’s first major painting made in 1808. Another two famous paintings made by Friedrich in the subsequent year were ‘Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog’ and ‘Chalk Cliffs’. But all these paintings failed to enjoy commercial success despite some enthusiastic reviews from certain artists. With the rise of Realism, Modernism and other movements in the world of art, Frederik’s started to lose the sheen and fell into obscurity in his later years.

Posthumous Fame

Friedrich’s works inspired many a painter after his death in 1906. His pure landscape paintings and his landscapes featuring human and other elements became a major passion among western painters. Some of his paintings were displayed in a Romanticism exhibit in Berlin in 1906. Artworld started recognizing him as one of the most important German artists. Friedrich’s works are presently on display in major galleries and museums such as National Gallery, the Hermitage Museum, etc.

Friedrich’s Major Paintings

Friedrich’s early work, ‘Cross in the Mountains‘ (1808-1809), was a commissioned work, probably, for a family chapel. The painting features a cross atop a mountain in a landscape setting. ‘The Abbey in the Oakwood‘ (1808-1810) depicts a group of monks carrying a coffin past a ruined church and stand of barren trees. Friedrich’s other work ‘Morning in the Riesengebirge (1811) shows a barely visible cross within a mounting setting, surrounded by morning mist and clouds. ‘Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818), ‘Chalk Cliffs on Rugen’ (1818), ‘Moonrise over the Sea (1822), ‘The Sea of Ice (1823-24), ‘Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon’ (1824) are some of his other famous works.