A MASTERPIECE, IN THE HISTORY OF PAINTING

(18) Caspar David Friedrich

Source: fr.wikipedia.org

Giant Mountains (View of the Small Sturmhaube from Warmbrunn)

Caspar David Friedrich – 1810 – oil on canvas

Caspar David Friedrich: German painter (born in Greifswald 1774 – died in Dresden 1840).
After studying from 1794 to 1798 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, where he knows the works of Abildgaard, Friedrich moved to Dresden in 1798. He attended the poet Ludwig Tieck and the painters Carus, Runge, Kersting and Dahl. With his large sepia drawings of a precise technique, representing mainly sites of the island of Rügen, he won his first successes (Hamburg Museum, Albertina, Museum Weimar). His profound reflections on nature, a scrupulous observation of reality allow him to find his own originality in the field of painting. He returned on several occasions to his native region, where he became associated with Runge, in 1801, 1802 and 1806, and created a landscape style – always composed – that was personal to him (Mist, 1806, Vienna, KM; Dolmen in the snow, Dresden, Gg). In the Cross on the Mountain, called Retable de Tetschen (1807-1808, id.), He resorts to the landscape to express his religious emotion. The Monk by the Sea (1809, Berlin, Charlottenburg) is the most perfect expression of his transcendent conception of landscape. The Abbey in a wood (1809, id.) And the Morning in the Riesengebirge (1811, id.) Are among the most outstanding works of this period. New voyages on the Baltic Sea in 1809, then in 1810 in the Riesengebirge and in the Harz in 1811 enriched his repertoire of motifs (the Rainbow, 1808, Essen, Folkwang Museum, the Riesengebirge Landscape, Moscow, Pushkin Museum)….. [from the Larousse website. fr, personal translation]

Portrait of Caspar David Friedrich by Gerhard von Kügelgen (1772–1820)

Source: commons.wikimedia.org