Caspar David Friedrich

Caspar David Friedrich is arguably the most important painter of German Romanticism - the artist who most fully realised its philosophical ideas in painting. Born in Greifswald on the Baltic coast in 1774, he trained in Copenhagen before settling in Dresden, where he spent most of his working life. He died in 1840, largely forgotten at the time, with his reputation only fully restored in the twentieth century.

His paintings are best known for their quiet, contemplative landscapes, often showing lone figures placed before vast natural scenes. Rather than depicting nature realistically, he used it to express inner emotional or spiritual states, treating landscape as something symbolic.

In Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, for instance, the figure’s position facing an obscured, limitless horizon can be read as a projection of emotional states such as uncertainty, awe, and smallness in the face of the unknown.