Caspar David Friedrich

Categories: 1774 births | 1840 deaths | German painters | Romantic artists | Natives of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania

Image:Self-portait by Caspar David Friedrich.jpg
Self-portrait in chalk, 1810

Caspar David Friedrich (September 5, 1774 – May 7, 1840) was a 19th century German romantic painter, considered by many critics to be one of the finest exemplars of the movement.

Born in Greifswald, he studied at Copenhagen from 1794 to 1798. After leaving Copenhagen, he visited several scenic spots in Germany before settling in Dresden. His famous painting "Mönch am Meer" (Monk by the Sea) impressed Karl Friedrich Schinkel (later Prussia's most famous classicist architect) so much that he gave up painting and took up architecture, much to the benefit of German and world architecture. Caspar David Friedrich died in Dresden, Saxony.

His paintings portray the untamed power of nature; this is in sharp contrast to Enlightenment-era painters such as Thomas Gainsborough, who used nature to bring out qualities in their human subjects. His work is often read as expressing German nationalism and patriotism during a time of the Napoleonic Wars. Adolf Hitler would later cite Friedrich's work as expressing the Aryan ideals and co-opted a painting as a cover for a Nazi propaganda magazine, making some contemporary critics and art historians reluctant to promote his work.

Friedrich's style influenced the painting of the Norwegian Johann Christian Dahl and perhaps also the painters of the American Hudson River School, the Rocky Mountain School, and the New England Luminists.


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