Caspar David Friedrich

Caspar David Friedrich (German: [ˌkaspaʁ ˌdaːvɪt ˈfʁiːdʁɪç] ^ⓘ; 5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation, whose often symbolic, and anti-classical work, conveys a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. Friedrich's paintings often set contemplative human figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins. Art historian Christopher John Murray described their presence, in diminished perspective, amid expansive landscapes, as reducing the figures to a scale that directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension".^[1]

Friedrich was born in the town of Greifswald on the Baltic Sea in what was at the time Swedish Pomerania. He studied in Copenhagen 1794-1798, before settling in Dresden. He came of age during a period when, across Europe, a growing disillusionment with materialistic society was giving rise to a new appreciation of spirituality. This shift in ideals was often expressed through a reevaluation of the natural world, as artists such as Friedrich, J. M. W. Turner and John Constable sought to depict nature as a "divine creation, to be set against the artifice of human civilization".^[2]

Friedrich's work brought him renown early in his career. Contemporaries such as the French sculptor David d'Angers spoke of him as having discovered "the tragedy of landscape". His work nevertheless fell from favour during his later years, and he died in obscurity.^[3] As Germany moved towards modernisation in the late 19th century, a new sense of urgency characterised its art, and Friedrich's contemplative depictions of stillness came to be seen as products of a bygone age.

The early 20th century brought a renewed appreciation of his art, beginning in 1906 with an exhibition of thirty-two of his paintings in Berlin. His work influenced Expressionist artists and later Surrealists and Existentialists. The rise of Nazism in the early 1930s saw a resurgence in Friedrich's popularity, but this was followed by a sharp decline as his paintings were, by association with the Nazi movement, seen as promoting German nationalism.

In the late 1970s Friedrich regained his reputation as an icon of the German Romantic movement and a painter of international importance. His work has been brought together in a major exhibition in Germany in 2024 under the title "Infinitive Landscapes", which refers to the philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher, who was important to Friedrich and whose mathematics of infinity found its way into Friedrich's geometrically constructed paintings as hyperbolas and the golden ratio.^[4]

In 2025, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will also show a 75 piece exhibition on Caspar David Friedrich under the title "Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature."

Caspar David Friedrich was born on 5 September 1774, in

Friedrich began his formal study of art in 1790 as a private student of artist Johann Gottfried Quistorp at the University of Greifswald in his home city, at which the art department is now named Caspar-David-Friedrich-Institut^[10] in his honour. Quistorp took his students on outdoor drawing excursions; as a result, Friedrich was encouraged to sketch from life at an early age.^[5] Through Quistorp, Friedrich met and was subsequently influenced by the theologian Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten, who taught that nature was a revelation of God.^[5] Quistorp introduced Friedrich to the work of the German 17th-century artist Adam Elsheimer, whose works often included religious subjects dominated by landscape, and nocturnal subjects.^[11] During this period he also studied literature and aesthetics with Swedish professor Thomas Thorild. Four years later Friedrich entered the prestigious Academy of Copenhagen, where he began his education by making copies of casts from antique sculptures before proceeding to drawing from life.^[12]

Living in Copenhagen afforded the young painter access to the

His reputation as an artist was established when he won a prize in 1805 at the Weimar competition organised by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. At the time, the Weimar competition tended to draw mediocre and now-forgotten artists presenting derivative mixtures of neo-classical and pseudo-Greek styles. The poor quality of the entries began to prove damaging to Goethe's reputation, so when Friedrich entered two sepia drawings—Procession at Dawn and Fisher-Folk by the Sea—the poet responded enthusiastically and wrote, "We must praise the artist's resourcefulness in this picture fairly. The drawing is well done, the procession is ingenious and appropriate ... his treatment combines a great deal of firmness, diligence and neatness ... the ingenious watercolour ... is also worthy of praise."^[20]

Friedrich completed the first of his major paintings in 1808, at the age of 34.

Although the altarpiece was generally coldly received, it was Friedrich's first painting to receive wide publicity. The artist's friends publicly defended the work, while art critic Basilius von Ramdohr published a long article challenging Friedrich's use of landscape in a religious context. He rejected the idea that landscape painting could convey explicit meaning, writing that it would be "a veritable presumption, if landscape painting were to sneak into the church and creep onto the altar".^[23] Friedrich responded with a programme describing his intentions in 1809, comparing the rays of the evening sun to the light of the Holy Father.^[24] This statement marked the only time Friedrich recorded a detailed interpretation of his own work, and the painting was among the few commissions the artist ever received.^[25]

Following the purchase of two of his paintings by the Prussian Crown Prince, Friedrich was elected a member of the

On 21 January 1818, Friedrich married Caroline Bommer [de], the twenty-five-year-old daughter of a dyer from Dresden.^[26] The couple had three children, with their first, Emma, arriving in 1820. Gustav Adolf [de], their third child, was named after Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus, and became a notable painter in his own right.

Around this time, he found support from two sources in Russia. In 1820, the Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich, at the behest of his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, visited Friedrich's studio and returned to Saint Petersburg with a number of his paintings, an exchange that began a patronage that continued for many years.^[33] Not long thereafter, the poet Vasily Zhukovsky, tutor to the Grand Duke's son (later Tsar Alexander II), met Friedrich in 1821 and found in him a kindred spirit. For decades Zhukovsky helped Friedrich both by purchasing his work himself and by recommending his art to the royal family; his assistance toward the end of Friedrich's career proved invaluable to the ailing and impoverished artist. Zhukovsky remarked that his friend's paintings "please us by their precision, each of them awakening a memory in our mind."^[34]

Friedrich was acquainted with

Friedrich's reputation steadily declined over the final fifteen years of his life. As the ideals of early Romanticism passed from fashion, he came to be viewed as an eccentric and melancholy character, out of touch with the times. Gradually his patrons fell away.[36] By 1820, he was living as a recluse and was described by friends as the "most solitary of the solitary".^[28] Towards the end of his life he lived in relative poverty.^[17] He became isolated and spent long periods of the day and night walking alone through woods and fields, often beginning his strolls before sunrise.^[37]

He suffered his first stroke in June 1835, which left him with minor limb paralysis and greatly reduced his ability to paint.^[38] As a result, he was unable to work in oil; instead he was limited to watercolour, sepia and reworking older compositions. Although his vision remained strong, he had lost the full strength of his hand. Yet he was able to produce a final 'black painting', Seashore by Moonlight (1835–1836), described by Vaughan as the "darkest of all his shorelines, in which richness of tonality compensates for the lack of his former finesse".^[39] Symbols of death appeared in his work from this period.^[36] Soon after his stroke, the Russian royal family purchased a number of his earlier works, and the proceeds allowed him to travel to Teplitz—in today's Czech Republic—to recover.^[40]

During the mid-1830s, Friedrich began a series of portraits and he returned to observing himself in nature. As the art historian William Vaughan observed, however, "He can see himself as a man greatly changed. He is no longer the upright, supportive figure that appeared in Two Men Contemplating the Moon in 1819. He is old and stiff ... he moves with a stoop".^[41] By 1838, he was capable of working in a small format only. He and his family were living in poverty and grew increasingly dependent for support on the charity of friends.^[42]

Friedrich died in Dresden on 7 May 1840, and was buried in Dresden's Trinitatis-Friedhof (Trinity Cemetery) east of the city centre (the entrance to which he had painted some 15 years earlier). His simple flat gravestone lies north-west of the central roundel within the main avenue.^[43] His wife Caroline died impoverished seven years later, in 1847. ^{[citation needed]}

By this time his reputation and fame had waned, and his death was little noticed within the artistic community.^[28] His artwork had certainly been acknowledged during his lifetime, but not widely. While the close study of landscape and an emphasis on the spiritual elements of nature were commonplace in contemporary art, his interpretations were highly original and personal.^[44] By 1838, his work no longer sold or received attention from critics; the Romantic movement had moved away from the early idealism that the artist had helped found.^{[citation needed]}

Carl Gustav Carus later wrote a series of articles which paid tribute to Friedrich's transformation of the conventions of landscape painting. However, Carus' articles placed Friedrich firmly in his time, and did not place the artist within a continuing tradition.^[45] Only one of his paintings had been reproduced as a print, and that was produced in very few copies.^{[46][note 3]}

What the newer landscape artists see in a circle of a hundred degrees in Nature they press together unmercifully into an angle of vision of only forty-five degrees. And furthermore, what is in Nature separated by large spaces, is compressed into a cramped space and overfills and oversatiates the eye, creating an unfavorable and disquieting effect on the viewer.

— Caspar David Friedrich^[48]

The visualisation and portrayal of landscape in an entirely new manner was Friedrich's key innovation. He sought not just to explore the blissful enjoyment of a beautiful view, as in the classic conception, but rather to examine an instant of sublimity, a reunion with the spiritual self through the contemplation of nature. Friedrich was instrumental in transforming landscape in art from a backdrop subordinated to human drama to a self-contained emotive subject.^[48] Friedrich's paintings commonly employed the Rückenfigur—a person seen from behind, contemplating the view. The viewer is encouraged to place himself in the position of the Rückenfigur, by which means he experiences the sublime potential of nature, understanding that the scene is as perceived and idealised by a human.^[49]

Friedrich created the idea of a landscape full of romantic feeling—die romantische Stimmungslandschaft.

He was one of the first artists to portray winter landscapes in which the land is rendered as stark and dead. Friedrich's winter scenes are solemn and still—according to the art historian Hermann Beenken, Friedrich painted winter scenes in which "no man has yet set his foot. The theme of nearly all the older winter pictures had been less winter itself than life in winter. In the 16th and 17th centuries, it was thought impossible to leave out such motifs as the crowd of skaters, the wanderer ... It was Friedrich who first felt the wholly detached and distinctive features of a natural life. Instead of many tones, he sought the one; and so, in his landscape, he subordinated the composite chord into one single basic note".[51]

Bare oak trees and tree stumps, such as those in Raven Tree (c. 1822), Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon (c. 1824), and Willow Bush under a Setting Sun (c. 1835), are recurring elements of his paintings, and usually symbolise death.^[56] Countering the sense of despair are Friedrich's symbols for redemption: the cross and the clearing sky promise eternal life, and the slender moon suggests hope and the growing closeness of Christ.^[54] In his paintings of the sea, anchors often appear on the shore, also indicating a spiritual hope.^[57] In The Abbey in the Oakwood, the movement of the monks away from the open grave and toward the cross and the horizon imparts Friedrich's message that the final destination of man's life lies beyond the grave.^[58]

With dawn and dusk constituting prominent themes of his landscapes, Friedrich's own later years were characterised by a growing pessimism. His work becomes darker, revealing a fearsome monumentality. The Wreck of the Hope—also known as The Polar Sea or The Sea of Ice (1823–1824)—perhaps best summarises Friedrich's ideas and aims at this point, though in such a radical way that the painting was not well received. Completed in 1824, it depicted a grim subject, a shipwreck in the Arctic Ocean; "the image he produced, with its grinding slabs of travertine-colored floe ice chewing up a wooden ship, goes beyond documentary into allegory: the frail bark of human aspiration crushed by the world's immense and glacial indifference."^[60]

Friedrich's written commentary on aesthetics was limited to a collection of aphorisms set down in 1830, in which he explained the need for the artist to match natural observation with an introspective scrutiny of his own personality. His best-known remark advises the artist to "close your bodily eye so that you may see your picture first with the spiritual eye. Then bring to the light of day that which you have seen in the darkness so that it may react upon others from the outside inwards."^[61]

Both Friedrich's life and art have at times been perceived by some to have been marked with an overwhelming sense of loneliness.^[62] Art historians and some of his contemporaries attribute such interpretations to the losses suffered during his youth to the bleak outlook of his adulthood,^[63] while Friedrich's pale and withdrawn appearance helped reinforce the popular notion of the "taciturn man from the North".^{[64][note 4]}

Friedrich suffered depressive episodes in 1799, 1803–1805, c. 1813, in 1816 and between 1824 and 1826. There are noticeable thematic shifts in the works he produced during these episodes, which see the emergence of such motifs and symbols as vultures, owls, graveyards and ruins.^[65] From 1826 these motifs became a permanent feature of his output, while his use of colour became more dark and muted. Carus wrote in 1829 that Friedrich "is surrounded by a thick, gloomy cloud of spiritual uncertainty", though the noted art historian and curator Hubertus Gassner disagrees with such notions, seeing in Friedrich's work a positive and life-affirming subtext inspired by Freemasonry and religion.^[66]

Reflecting Friedrich's patriotism and resentment during the 1813 French occupation of the dominion of

In Old Heroes' Graves (1812), a dilapidated monument inscribed "Arminius" invokes the Germanic chieftain, a symbol of nationalism, while the four tombs of fallen heroes are slightly ajar, freeing their spirits for eternity. Two French soldiers appear as small figures before a cave, lower and deep in a grotto surrounded by rock, as if farther from heaven.^[57] A second political painting, Fir Forest with the French Dragoon and the Raven (c. 1813), depicts a lost French soldier dwarfed by a dense forest, while on a tree stump a raven is perched—a prophet of doom, symbolizing the anticipated defeat of France.^{[note 6]}

Alongside other Romantic painters, Friedrich helped position landscape painting as a major genre within Western art. Of his contemporaries, Friedrich's style most influenced the painting of Johan Christian Dahl (1788–1857). Among later generations, Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901) was strongly influenced by his work, and the substantial presence of Friedrich's works in Russian collections influenced many Russian painters, in particular Arkhip Kuindzhi (c. 1842–1910) and Ivan Shishkin (1832–1898). Friedrich's spirituality anticipated American painters such as Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847–1917), Ralph Blakelock (1847–1919), the painters of the Hudson River School and the New England Luminists.^[68]

At the turn of the 20th century, Friedrich was rediscovered by the Norwegian art historian

A few years later, the Surrealist journal Minotaure included Friedrich in a 1939 article by the critic Marie Landsberger, thereby exposing his work to a far wider circle of artists. The influence of The Wreck of Hope (or The Sea of Ice) is evident in the 1940–41 painting Totes Meer by Paul Nash (1889–1946), a fervent admirer of Ernst.^[72] Friedrich's work has been cited as an inspiration by other major 20th-century artists, including Mark Rothko (1903–1970),^[73] Gerhard Richter (b. 1932),^[74][75] Gotthard Graubner^{[note 7][76][77]} and Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945).^[78] Friedrich's Romantic paintings have also been singled out by writer Samuel Beckett (1906–89), who, standing before Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon, said "This was the source of Waiting for Godot, you know."^[79]

Critical opinion

Until 1890, and especially after his friends had died, Friedrich's work lay in near-oblivion for decades. Yet, by 1890, the symbolism in his work began to ring true with the artistic mood of the day, especially in central Europe. However, despite a renewed interest and an acknowledgment of his originality, his lack of regard for "painterly effect" and thinly rendered surfaces jarred with the theories of the time.[83]

During the 1930s, Friedrich's work was used in the promotion of Nazi ideology,^[84] which attempted to fit the Romantic artist within the nationalistic Blut und Boden.^[85] It took decades for Friedrich's reputation to recover from this association with Nazism. His reliance on symbolism and the fact that his work fell outside the narrow definitions of modernism contributed to his fall from favour. In 1949, art historian Kenneth Clark wrote that Friedrich "worked in the frigid technique of his time, which could hardly inspire a school of modern painting", and suggested that the artist was trying to express in painting what is best left to poetry. Clark's dismissal of Friedrich reflected the damage the artist's reputation sustained during the late 1930s.^[86]

Friedrich's reputation suffered further damage when his imagery was adopted by a number of Hollywood directors, including Walt Disney, built on the work of such German cinema masters as Fritz Lang and F. W. Murnau, within the horror and fantasy genres.^[87] His rehabilitation was slow, but enhanced through the writings of such critics and scholars as Werner Hofmann, Helmut Börsch-Supan and Sigrid Hinz, who successfully rebutted the political associations ascribed to his work, developed a catalogue raisonné, and placed Friedrich within a purely art-historical context.^[88]

By the 1970s, he was again being exhibited in major international galleries and found favour with a new generation of critics and art historians.^[89] Today, his international reputation is well established. He is a national icon in his native Germany, and highly regarded by art historians and connoisseurs across the Western World. He is generally viewed as a figure of great psychological complexity, and according to Vaughan, "a believer who struggled with doubt, a celebrator of beauty haunted by darkness. In the end, he transcends interpretation, reaching across cultures through the compelling appeal of his imagery. He has truly emerged as a butterfly—hopefully one that will never again disappear from our sight".^[90]

Work

Main article: List of works by Caspar David Friedrich

Friedrich was a prolific artist who produced more than 500 attributed works.^[91] In line with the Romantic ideals of his time, he intended his paintings to function as pure aesthetic statements, so he was cautious that the titles given to his work were not overly descriptive or evocative. It is likely that some of today's more literal titles, such as The Stages of Life, were not given by the artist himself, but were instead adopted during one of the revivals of interest in Friedrich. Complications arise when dating Friedrich's work, in part because he often did not directly name or date his canvases. He kept a carefully detailed notebook on his output, however, which has been used by scholars to tie paintings to their completion dates.^[91]

• 
  Old Heroes' Graves (1812), 49.5 × 70.5 cm.

  Kunsthalle, Hamburg. A dilapidated monument inscribed "Arminius" invokes the Germanic chieftain, a symbol of nationalism. Two French soldiers appear as small figures before a cave, lower and deep in a grotto surrounded by rock, as if farther from heaven.^[57]
• 
  The Cross Beside The Baltic (1815), 45 × 33.5 cm.

  Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin. This painting marked a move away from depictions in broad daylight, to return to nocturnal scenes, twilight and a deeper poignancy of mood.^[92]
• 
  Moonrise over the Sea (1822). 55 × 71 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. From the early 1820s, human figures appear with increasing frequency in his paintings.^[32]
• 
  Graveyard under Snow (1826). 31 × 25 cm. Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig. Friedrich sketched memorial monuments and sculptures for mausoleums, reflecting his obsession with death and the afterlife. He also created some of the funerary art in Dresden's cemeteries.^[93]
• 
  The Oak Tree in the Snow (1829). 71 × 48 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Friedrich was one of the first artists to portray winter landscapes as stark and dead. His winter scenes are solemn and still—according to the art historian Hermann Beenken, Friedrich painted winter scenes in which "no man has yet set his foot".^[51]
• 
  The Stages of Life (1835). Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig. The Stages of Life is a meditation on the artist's mortality, depicting five ships at various distances. The foreground similarly shows five figures at different stages of life.^[94]
• 
  The Giant Mountains (1830–1835). 72 × 102 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Friedrich sought to explore the blissful enjoyment of a landscape as a reunion with the spiritual self through the contemplation of nature.^[95]
• 
  Seashore by Moonlight (1835–1836). 134 × 169 cm.

  Kunsthalle, Hamburg. His final "black painting", it is described by William Vaughan as the "darkest of all his shorelines."^[40]

Notes

References

1. ^ Murray 2004, p. 338.
2. ^ ^{a b} Vaughan 2004, p. 7.
3. ^ Miller 1974, pp. 205–210.
4. ^ [1], "The Man Who Could Paint Loneliness". The New Yorker accessed 4 July 2024.
5. ^ ^{a b c} Johnston, Leppien & Monrad 1999, p. 12.
6. ^ ^{a b} Wolf 2003, p. 17.
7. ^ Vaughan 2004, p. 18.
8. ^ Siegel 1978, p. 8.
9. ^ Boime 1990, p. 512.
10. ^ "Caspar-David-Friedrich-Institut". Universität Greifswald. Archived from the original on 24 April 2014. Retrieved 26 August 2023.
11. ^ Siegel 1978, p. 7.
12. ^ Vaughan 2004, p. 26.
13. ^ Vaughan 2004, p. 29.
14. ^ Vaughan 2004, p. 48.
15. ^ Griffiths & Carey 1994, p. 206.
16. ^ Vaughan 2004, p. 41.
17. ^ ^{a b c d} Johnston, Leppien & Monrad 1999, p. 45.
18. ^ Johnston, Leppien & Monrad 1999, p. 106.
19. ^ Johnston, Leppien & Monrad 1999, p. 14.
20. ^ Siegel 1978, pp. 43–44.
21. ^ Koerner 2002, pp. 56–61.
22. ^ Koerner 2002, p. 47.
23. ^ Vaughan 1980, p. 7.
24. ^ Johnston, Leppien & Monrad 1999, p. 116.
25. ^ Siegel 1978, pp. 55–56.
26. ^ ^{a b} Vaughan 1980, p. 101.
27. ^ Vaughan 2004, pp. 165–166.
28. ^ ^{a b c} Schmitz 1940, pp. 38–40.
29. ^ Vaughan 2004, pp. 184–185.
30. ^ Vaughan 2004, p. 203.
31. ^ Börsch-Supan 1974, pp. 41–45.
32. ^ ^{a b} Siegel 1978, p. 114.
33. ^ Updike, John. "Innerlichkeit and Eigentümlichkeit". The New York Review of Books, Volume 38, Number 5, 7 March 1991. Retrieved on 22 October 2008.
34. ^ ^{a b} Vaughan 1980, p. 66.
35. ^ Schmied 1995, p. 48.
36. ^ ^{a b} Vaughan 2004, p. 263.
37. ISBN 978-1-58839-004-2
    .
38. ^ Schmied 1995, p. 44.
39. ^ Vaughan 2004, pp. 300–302.
40. ^ ^{a b} Vaughan 2004, p. 302.
41. ^ Vaughan 2004, pp. 295–296.
42. ^ Guillaud, 128. Originally from Vaughan (1972, p43).
43. ^ "Trinitatisfriedhof". dresdner-stadtteile.de. Archived from the original on 5 December 2022. Retrieved 9 March 2025.
44. ^ Vaughan 1980, p. 65.
45. ^ Vaughan 2004, p. 309.
46. ^ Griffiths & Carey 1994, pp. 27, 207.
47. ^ Grewe 2006, p. 133.
48. ^ ^{a b} Mitchell 1984, pp. 452–464.
49. ^ Prettejohn 2005, pp. 54–56.
50. ^ Boime 1990, p. 601.
51. ^ ^{a b c} Beenken 1938, pp. 171–175.
52. ^ Academic American Encyclopedia (1989), p. 332.
53. ^ Börsch-Supan 1974, pp. 7–8.
54. ^ ^{a b} Börsch-Supan 1972, pp. 620–630.
55. ^ Larisey 1993, p. 14.
56. ^ Johnston, Leppien & Monrad 1999, pp. 114, 117–119.
57. ^ ^{a b c d e} Siegel 1974.
58. ^ Börsch-Supan 1974, pp. 84.
59. ^ Hughes, Robert (15 January 2005). "Force of nature". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 November 2008.
60. ^ "The Awestruck Witness". Time. 28 October 1974. Retrieved 22 August 2023
61. ^ Vaughan 1980, p. 68.
62. ^ Siegel 1978, p. 121.
63. ^ Börsch-Supan 1974, p. 11.
64. ^ Vaughan 1980, p. 64.
65. ^ Dahlenburg & Carsten 2005, p. 112.
66. ^ Lüddemann, Stefan. "Glimpses of Mystery In a Sea of Fog. Essen's Folkwang Museum reinterprets Caspar David Friedrich Archived 9 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine". The Atlantic Times (Germany), May 2006. Retrieved on 27 November 2008.
67. ^ Siegel 1978, pp. 87–88.
68. OCLC 23758262
    .
69. ^ Vaughan 2004, p. 318.
70. ^ Wolf 2003, p. 96.
71. ^ Vaughan 2004, p. 320.
72. ^ ^{a b} Causey 1980, p. 315.
73. ^ Vaughan 2004, p. 331.
74. ^ Elger 2009, pp. 173–78.
75. ^ "From Caspar David Friedrich to Gerhard Richter: German Paintings from Dresden". J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007. Retrieved 17 August 2012.
76. ^ Schütz 1991, pp. 49–53.
77. ^ Haase, Amine; Vowinckel, Andreas; von Wiese, Stephan (1983). Michael Buthe & Marcel Odenbach. Walter Phillips Gallery. p. 3.
78. ^ Alteveer, Ian (2008). "Anselm Kiefer (Born 1945)". Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 16 November 2008. Altveer mentions a specific photograph by Kiefer inspired by Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.
79. ^ Leach, Cristin (24 October 2004). "Old Romantics Tug at the Heart". The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 10 December 2008. Retrieved 6 April 2018 – via Helnwein Museum.
80. National Gallery, London
    . Retrieved on 21 August 2023
81. ^ See also, Geldzahler (1969), 353. Reproduction of the Rothko can be found here "Light Earth and Blue 1954 Rothko,Mark oil painting reproduction, hand-painted oil painting for sale". Archived from the original on 1 December 2008. Retrieved 21 November 2008..
82. LCCN 71-87179
    .
83. ^ Vaughan 1991, pp. 626–628.
84. ^ Vaughan 2004, pp. 219–224.
85. ^ Forster-Hahn 1976, pp. 113–116.
86. ^ Clark 2007, p. 72.
87. ^ Vaughan 2004, pp. 325–326.
88. ^ Vaughan 2004, p. 325.
89. ^ Vaughan 2004, p. 329.
90. ^ Vaughan 2004, p. 332.
91. ^ ^{a b} Siegel 1978, p. 3.
92. ^ Vaughan 2004, p. 279.
93. ^ Wolf 2003, p. 45.
94. ^ Wolf 2003, p. 12.
95. ^ Siegel 1978, p. 62.

Sources

• Academic American Encyclopedia. Vol. 3. Los Angeles: Grolier. 2008.
  ISBN 978-0717-22024-3
  .
• Beenken, Hermann (1938). "Caspar David Friedrich". The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. 72 (421): 171–175.
  JSTOR 867281
  .
• ISBN 978-0-226-06335-5
  .
• Börsch-Supan, Helmut (1972). "Caspar David Friedrich's Landscapes with Self-Portraits". The Burlington Magazine. 114 (834): 620–630.
  JSTOR 877126
  .
• Börsch-Supan, Helmut (1974). Caspar David Friedrich. Twohig, Sarah (tr.). New York: George Braziller.
  ISBN 978-0-8076-0747-3
  .
• Causey, Andrew (1980). Paul Nash. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  ISBN 978-0-1981-7348-9
  .
• ISBN 978-1-4067-2824-8
  .
• ISBN 978-3-8055-7914-8
  .
• Elger, Dietmar (2009). Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting. Chicago: University of Press.
  ISBN 978-0-2262-0323-2
  .
• Forster-Hahn, Françoise (March 1976). "Recent Scholarship on Caspar David Friedrich". The Art Bulletin. 58 (1): 113–116.
  JSTOR 3049469
  .
• Grave, Johannes (2017). Caspar David Friedrich (2nd ed.). London/New York: Prestel.
  ISBN 978-3-7913-8357-6
  .
• Grewe, Cordula (May 2006). "Heaven on Earth: Cordula Grewe on Caspar David Friedrich". Artforum International. 44 (9).
• Griffiths, Antony; Carey, Francis (1994). German Printmaking in the Age of Goethe. London: British Museum Press.
  ISBN 978-0-7141-1659-4
  .
• Guillaud, Maurice; Guillaud, Jacqueline, eds. (1985), Caspar David Friedrich, line and transparency – Exhibition catalogue, Centre Culturel du Marais, Paris, New York: Rizzoli International Publications,
  ISBN 0-8478-5408-6
• Johnston, Catherine; Leppien, Helmut R.; Monrad, Kasper (1999). Baltic Light: Early Open-Air Painting in Denmark and North Germany. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  ISBN 978-0-3000-8166-4
  .
• Koerner, Joseph Leo (2002). Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
  ISBN 978-1-86189-439-7
  .
• Larisey, Peter (1993). Light for a Cold Land: Lawren Harris's Life and Work. Toronto: Dundurn.
  ISBN 978-1-5500-2188-2
  .
• Miller, Philip B. (1974). "Anxiety and Abstraction: Kleist and Brentano on Caspar David Friedrich". Art Journal. 33 (3): 205–210.
  JSTOR 775782
  .
• Mitchell, Timothy (September 1984). "Caspar David Friedrich's Der Watzmann: German Romantic Landscape Painting and Historical Geology". The Art Bulletin. 66 (3).
  JSTOR 3050447
  .
• Murray, Christopher John (2004). Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760–1850. London: Taylor & Francis.
  ISBN 1-57958-422-5
  .
• ISBN 978-0-1928-0160-9
  .
• Schmied, Wieland (1995). Caspar David Friedrich. New York: H.N. Abrams.
  ISBN 978-0-8109-3327-9
  .
• Schmitz, Matthias (1940). Caspar David Friedrich: His Life and Work. German Library of Information.
• Schütz, Sabine (1991). "Color-Space Bodies: The Art of Gotthard Graubner". Arts Magazine. 65.
• Siegel, Linda (1974). "Synaesthesia and the Paintings of Caspar David Friedrich". The Art Journal. 33 (3): 196–204.
  JSTOR 775782
  .
• Siegel, Linda (1978). Caspar David Friedrich and the Age of German Romanticism. Boston: Branden Publishing Co.
  ISBN 978-0-8283-1659-0
  .
• Vaughan, William (1972), Caspar David Friedrich, 1774–1840: Romantic Landscape Painting in Dresden – Catalogue of an Exhibition Held at the
  ISBN 0-900874-36-8
• Vaughan, William (1980). German Romantic Painting. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  ISBN 978-0-3000-2387-9
  .
• Vaughan, William (1991). "Reviewed Works: 'The Romantic Vision of Caspar David Friedrich' + 'Painting and Drawings from the USSR' by Sabine Rewald'". Burlington Magazine. 133 (1062).
  JSTOR 884854
  .
• Vaughan, William (2004). Friedrich. Oxford: Phaidon Press.
  ISBN 978-0-7148-4060-4
  .
• Wolf, Norbert (2003). Caspar David Friedrich. Köln: Taschen.
  ISBN 978-3-8228-2293-7
  .

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Caspar David Friedrich.

External videos
Friedrich's The Lone Tree
Friedrich's Woman at a Window
Friedrich's A Walk at Dusk, all from Smarthistory

• 250 Years Caspar David Friedrich
• Hermitage Museum Archive
• CasparDavidFriedrich.org – 89 paintings by Caspar David Friedrich
• Biographical timeline, Hamburg Kunsthalle
• Caspar David Friedrich and the German romantic landscape
• German masters of the nineteenth century: paintings and drawings from the Federal Republic of Germany (1981), full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on Caspar David Friedrich (no. 29–36)
• Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 8 — May 11, 2025. Press release The New York Times review