Published 11 Mar 2021
Friedrich: Moonrise over the Sea 1822 (detail)
The Greatest of the German Romantic artists, Caspar David Friedrich, devoted his life to landscape painting, creating mysterious and compelling images of remarkable intensity. A serious, melancholy figure, whose forbidding appearance was softened by a childlike simplicity, he was only truly content when contemplating the rugged landscapes of his Pomeranian homeland or the stunning German countryside.
Griefswald, Germany
Fredrich was born in 1774 in the small town of Griefswald on the Baltic coast, the son of a candle-maker and soap-boiler.
His father, Adolf Gottlieb, was a fairly successful businessman, but more importantly, he was a devout Protestant.
Friedrich Self-Portrait
And like many middle-class children in Germany then, Caspar David and his nine brothers and sisters
Friedrich at 27
experienced a strict, and almost Spartan upbringing.
Home of the Friedrich Family in Griefswald
This way of life had a lasting influence on Friedrich:
Friedrich in his studio
years later, visitors would comment on the frugality of his home and studio
Friedrich Self-Portrait at 20
It seems that Friedrich had always had a natural tendency towards introspection and melancholy.
Marianne Stokes: Death and the Maiden c1908
This was intensified by a tragic series of deaths in his childhood: he lost his mother in 1781 when he was just seven years old.
Mother Heide
After her death, the kindly 'Mother Heide' was employed to keep house and look after the children.
Frank Weston Benson: Two Little Girls 1903
He also lost two little sisters - one in 1782 and another in 1791.
Frederik Marianus Kruseman: Ice Skating
But the most traumatic event was the death of his brother, who drowned while trying to save Friedrich himself in a skating accident.
Jean-Baptiste Creuze: Young Man in a Hat 1750s
This seems to have added a sense of guilt to his grief,
making the contemplation of death almost a duty for him. As he later put it:
‘To live one day eternally, one must give oneself over to death many times.’
Friedrich: Landscape with Mountain Lake, Morning
The fact that Friedrich’s preoccupation with religion and death led him to devote his life to landscape painting makes him very much a child of his time.
Ludwig Theobul Kosegarten
Possibly the works of a local poet, L.T. Kosegarten, first turned his thoughts in this particular direction.
Thomas Gray
Kosegarten, who was an admirer of such English nature poets as Thomas Gray, was a pastor as well as a poet,
and found religious inspiration in the contemplation of nature, which he referred to as ‘Christ’s bible’.
Caspar David Friedrich Life and Work
Friedrich at 27
A sepia self-portrait shows Friedrich at the time he specialised in this technique. He portrays himself with the trappings of his trade: an eyeshade and a bottle of brown ink or water attached to the buttonhole of his coat.
Friedrich: Port in the Moonlight 1811
Friedrich based this imaginary view of a harbour in moonlight on his childhood home of Griefswald. The image of silhouetted ships on still water held a lifelong fascination for him.
Medieval Ruins
The ruined Cistercian abbey of Eldena just outside Griefswald provided Friedrich with a picturesque motif which he used again and again in his paintings.
Caspar David’s first art teacher, Johann Gottfried Quistorp, was a friend of Kosegarten. He seems to have nurtured his young pupil’s poetic sentiments, but may also have had a more practical purpose in mind when he encouraged Friedrich’s specialization in landscape painting.
Friedrich: Cloud Study 1798
For the vogue for nature poetry had stimulated the public taste for paintings of the countryside –
Friedrich: The Summer 1807
in particular for picturesque views with primeval or medieval associations.
Friedrich: Eldena Ruin 1825
And such views were in rich supply for the young painter:
Burgruine_Landskron_(Ostvorpommern)
indeed, he was surrounded by them in the remote north German province of Pomerania where he lived. He was sometimes even able to copy them from other artists.
Friedrich: The Temple of Juno in Agrigento c1830
There were many signs of prehistoric settlements in the area, particularly the huge dolmens known as ‘Giant’s Graves’ on the island of Rügen, just off the Baltic coast.
Prehistoric Dolmen on the Island of Rügen
The ruined medieval abbey of Eldena a few miles from Griefswald also inspired him.
Ruins of Medieval Abby, Eldena
When he was 20, Friedrich left his home town and travelled to the Danish capital, Copenhagen, to study art.
The academy their was the most celebrated in Northern Europe, and Fredrich came into contact with the severe Neoclassical style in favour at that time.
The Abduction of the Sabine Women 1633
Like all other students, he set about studying the human figure,
but was also strongly influenced by the work of one of his teachers, Jens Juel, who often painted local views full of mood and with sentimental associations.
Jens Juel Landscape near Øresund 1800
Friedrich felt at odds with the strict, academic approach to art which he encountered at Copenhagen, and later wrote: ‘All the teaching and instructing kill man’s spiritual nature.’
Friedrich: Hiker at the Milestone 1802
In 1798, after a brief stay in Berlin, Friedrich went to live in Dresden, which was to remain his base for the rest of his life.
View of Dresden 1748
The Saxon capital was one of the main art centres of Germany, with a fine collection of Old Masters and a flourishing community of artists and intellectuals.
Friedrich: Winter Night, Old Age and Death 1803
He only ever left the city to visit his relatives back in his native Pomerania, and to make journeys to northern and central Germany to gather material for his landscapes.
Friedrich: Bohemian Landscape c1808
At first Friedrich’s existence was harsh, but although he lived a somewhat secluded life, the letters written during his first years in Dresden indicate that this was a relatively happy time.
Friedrich: Ship in the Polar Sea 1798
Until his name became known in the city, he made his living in various ways: he was employed as a drawing master and even resorted to acting as a guide for tourists.
Friedrich: Dolmen in the Snow 1807
Gradually, he built up a reputation for views of the wild areas of his homeland.
Giant Mountains Landscape with Rising Fog 1809-10
The move to Dresden was critical to Friedrich, for he arrived around the time when the city was becoming the centre of an influential group of writers and critics known as the ‘Dresden Romantics’.
Friedrich: Winter 1807-08
Rejecting the dry rationality of the classical age, they turned instead to an exploration of the exotic, irrational and mystical aspects of experience.
Friedrich: Winter Landscape with Church 1811
One of the major figures of the group, the critic Friedrich Schlegel, was the first to use the word Romantic to describe the dynamic spirituality of the ‘modern age’.
Friedrich: Funeral Scene at the Beach 1799
And though Friedrich had little contact with the leading members of the group, he had friends among their circle, and quickly absorbed their ideas.
Friedrich: Landscape in the Riesengebirg 1811
It was around 1800 that Friedrich first began to introduce the mystical and dramatic themes expounded by the Dresden Romantics into his pictures.
Friedrich: Wreck in the Moonlight c1835
But there may have also been personal reasons behind this change in his art.
Friedrich: Mountain Landscape with Rainbow c1809-1810
Around 1803 he suffered an acute period of introspection and depression, and is reported to have tried to kill himself by cutting his throat.
Friedrich: City at Moonrise 1817
It is certainly true that Friedrich cultivated a monk-like appearance after that date, acquiring a reputation as an isolated eccentric.
Friedrich: Self-Portrait 1810
Despite that traumatic incident, the period marks the beginning of his success as an artist.
Friedrich: View of a Harbour 1815-16
Despite that traumatic incident, the period marks the beginning of his success as an artist. Over the next ten years Friedrich was to become celebrated throughout Germany, and was patronized by such influential figures as the Prussian Royal Family and the Duke of Weimar.
Friedrich: Pilgrimage at Sunset 1805
An important moment came in 1805 when he shared first prize for the sepias that he sent to the annual exhibition in Weimar.
Friedrich: Seashore and Fishermen 1807
The results of this change can be seen most dramatically in his highly controversial picture, The Cross in the Mountains. Completed in 1808, it shows a silhouette of a mountain top with a cross on it.
Friedrich: Cross in the Mountains 1808
Contemporaries were astounded that the artist had chosen a ‘view’ to function as an altarpiece,
but Friedrich even designed a special frame for it, with religious symbols to emphasize the point.
Friedrich: Self-Portrait
Although he was harshly criticised for this work, the notoriety it brought him appears to have done Friedrich more good than harm.
Friedrich: Abbey in the Oak Forest 1810
In 1810, he enhanced his reputation further when he exhibited Abby in the Oak Forest,
Friedrich: Monk by the Sea 1809
and its companion picture, Monk by the Sea.
Friedrich: Morning in Riesengebirg 1810
Friedrich’s success as a strange and extreme artist was closely related to the current vogue for the Romantics.
Paul Delaroche: Napoleon Crossing the Alps 1848 (detail)
Since 1806 Germany had been overrun by Napoleon’s army, and Romanticism became a cultural rallying point, a patriotic means of emphasizing ‘Germaness’.
Freierich: Ships Sailing off in the Morning c1816-17
It’s pure spirituality, naturalism and vigour were in stark contrast to the ‘artificial posturing’ of French art,
Friedrich: Self-Portrait c1810-1820
and Friedrich – the wild man from the north – was an appropriate symbol for such a movement.
Friedrich: Monastery Graveyard in the Snow 1819
But the movement that enhanced Friedrich’s reputation also helped to bring about its decline.
Friedrich: Morning 1821
At a time when Germany was divided into a number of small states, Friedrich was among those patriots who sought unification of the country
Friedrich: Doorway in Meissen 1827
as a means of bringing about a democratic society and ending the archaic rule of kings and dukes.
Friedrich: Graveyard under Snow 1826
But after the Napoleonic Wars, the traditional rulers were very much back in power, seeking to eradicate such radicalism.
Friedrich: Coastline in the Evening Light 1816-1818
Friedrich became an increasingly isolated figure, regarded as out of date both for his ideas and for the eccentricity of his art.
Friedrich: The north Sea in the Moonlight 1824
However, this decline was a slow and gradual one.
Dresden Academy
At first he made a good living from his art, and in 1816 was made a member of the Dresden Academy – a position that carried a small stipend.
Friedrich: The Garden Bower 1818
He felt sure enough of his position to get married in 1818.
Friedrich: Day c1821
Many friends remarked that Friedrich’s life-stile was little altered by the acquisition of a quiet and unassuming partner.
Friedrich: Woman at a Window (detail) 1822
He was 44, and his wife Caroline was less than half his age.
Friedrich: Woman at a Window 1822
But there is a new tone of happiness in his letters: ‘It is indeed a droll thing having a wife,’ he wrote.
Friedrich: Woman in Front of the Setting Sun 1818
‘There is more eating, more drinking, more sleeping, more laughing, more bantering, more fooling around.’
Friedrich: Stages of Life (detail)
Deeply fond of children, Friedrich welcomed the arrival of his own two daughters and a son.
Friedrich: Boats in Harbour at Evening 1828
And from that time, too, his art shows a greater interest in domestic scenes and daily events.
Friedrich: On a Sailing Vessel 1818
Around this time, Friedrich was making new contacts among a younger generation of artists.
Johan Cristian Dahl: View of Bastei 1819
His most enduring friendship was with the Norwegian artist Johann Christian Dahl, who arrived in Dresden in 1818.
River Elbe, Germany
From 1823, Friedrich and Dahl lived in the same house on the banks of the River Elbe.
Johan Christian Dahl
For the younger generation, Dahl was the leader, and in 1824 it was Dahl, rather than Friedrich, who was appointed to the teaching post of Professor of Landscape at the Academy.
Friedrich: Man and Woman Contemplation the Moon 1824
Despite this, they remained friends – though there was a dark period when Friedrich suspected his wife of having an affair with his friend.
Friedrich: Seashore in Moonlight 1835
The suspicions were without foundation, and are probably best explained as a consequence of the growing ill health that he endured in his last years.
Friedrich: The cemetery Gate c1825-1830
In 1825 Friedrich suffered a stroke. This was followed by other attacks, the most severe being that of 1835, which left him greatly incapacitated.
Friedrich: Hills and Ploughed Fields near Dresden 1825
Yet this period was one of great artistic achievement.
Friedrich: The Large Enclosure near Dresden 1832
He developed a new sensitivity to colour and many of his finest and most poignant works – including The Large Enclosure
Friedrich: The Stages of Life 1835
and The Stages of Life come from that time.
Friedrich: Evening on the Baltic Sea c1820-1825
This was also the period in which he wrote down most of his ideas on art.
Friedrich: The Evening Star 1830-1835
Though these mainly consisted of attacks upon the empty naturalism and vainglorious classicism of his contemporaries, there are also positive statements of his spiritual approach to art, including his most quoted remark:
Friedrich: Moonrise over the Sea 1821
‘Close your bodily eye, so that you may see your picture first with the spiritual eye.
Friedrich: Two Men Contemplating the Moon 1819-20
Then bring to the light of day that which you have seen in the darkness so that it may react on others from outside inwards.’
Friedrich: Morning in the Mountains 1823
When Friedrich died in 1840 he was almost a forgotten figure.
Friedrich: Ruins of the Oybin c1835
Not until the end of the 19th century – when symbolism came back into fashion – did his reputation begin to rise once more.
Friedrich: Evening Landscape with Two men 1833
Picture Gallery
Friedrich: Abbey in the Oak Forest 1810Throughout his life, Friedrich was obsessed with 'death, transience and the grave'. as he put it. In this chill, sombre work, he shows a procession of monks carrying a coffin towards a desolate Gothic ruin, surrounded by barren oak frees. For Friedrich, the ruined structure symbolized the incompleteness of earthly existence, while the portal stood as a gateway to the spiritual life beyond.
Friedrich: The Stages of Life 1835
This mysterious painting has been interpreted as a premonition of death, for Friedrich suffered a severe stroke in June 1835 and was scarcely able to paint for the last five years of his life. He appears in the painting wearing a long, fur-trimmed cloak and walking slowly and deliberately towards the seashore. His dignified figure is echoed by a ghostly ship, which has almost reached the bay. Now nearing the end of its voyage, the ship is a poignant symbol of man's passing from birth to death.
Friedrich: Wanderer Looking over a Sea of Fog c1815
Standing on a rock cliff, Friedrich's 'wanderer' looks out over a landscape shrouded in thick mists. Absorbed in thought, he personifies Friedrich's overwhelming desire for solitude: 'I have to stay alone in order to fully contemplate and feel nature', he wrote.
Friedrich: Chalk Cliffs on Rügen c1819
In 1818, shortly after his marriage, Friedrich took his young wife on a tour of his homeland and together with his favourite brother, Christian, they visited the spectacular white cliffs of Rügen. Friedrich painted this picture later, probably as a honeymoon memento.
Friedrich: Village Landscape in Morning Light 1822This pastoral landscape was painted as a companion to Moonrise over the Sea (below). A shepherd rests against the trunk of a leafy oak while his flock graze peacefully in the fertile plains.
Friedrich: Moonrise over the Sea 1822
Friedrich: The Arctic Shipwreck 1824
Friedrich's Monumental vision of a ship being crushed by an iceberg may have been influenced by William Parry's polar expedition of 1819-20 in search of the Northwest Passage.
Friedrich: The Watzman 1824-25
Friedrich had never been to the Alps, so he based his painting of the Watzmann mountain on a watercolour by one of his pupils. A contemporary critic likened the effect to 'sublime church music'.
Friedrich: The Stages of Life 1835Friedrich probably painted The Stages of Life in 1835, shortly before his second major stroke. It shows the popular promenading point of Utkiek in Wieck, where the people of Griefswald often went to watch the ships as they approached Griefswald harbour. The five figures on the shore have been identified as Friedrich himself and members of his family. They are mirrored by five ships on the sea, sailing quietly towards the bay. Their mysterious silhouettes and the strange gestures of the figures suggest that this is more than just a memento of a family excursion. The picture has been interpreted as a metaphorical voyage through life, ending in death - 'the eternal resting place'.
Friedrich: The Large Enclosure near Dresden 1832
Friedrich exploits a variety of unusual devices to create the illusion of distance in his paintings. Sometimes the effect is startling, and the space in his landscapes does not always appear strictly realistic. But by using such unexpected techniques, Friedrich brings a sense of mystery to his works.
In The Large Enclosure Friedrich uses curves to create the impression of distance in flat, estuary country. The foreground appears as a watery arch, which rises steeply before us: the curve makes this area appear to stretch a long way back into space. The shape is echoed in the deep blue arc of the sky, which sweeps down beyond the trees. These converging curves direct the viewer's gaze to the horizon between them, which Friedrich highlights with a thin strip of yellow paint.
Friedrich: Wanderer Looking over a Sea of Fog c1815
In the Wanderer, the effect is more dramatic. The steep angle of the rocky foreground draws the viewer's eye to the broad, distant valley, softened by mists. Friedrich placed the silhouetted wanderer at the point where the lines converge. The stark contrast between this dark, looming figure and the pale distance emphasises the impression of depth in the picture, while reinforcing the atmosphere of unreality.
Caspar David Friedrich
1774 - 1840
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