1774-1840 Caspar David Friedrich Locations German painter, studied art at Copenhagen, and in 1798 settled in Dresden. Friedrich painted chiefly landscapes and seascapes, with and without figures, architectural pictures, including a few of Dresden, and some religious subjects. Religious feeling and symbolism permeate his œuvre, of which the seascape with figures, Die Lebensstufen, is a characteristic example. He possessed considerable power to convey mood in landscape. Almost forgotten in the 19th c. and early 20th c., interest in his work increased considerably in the mid-20th c. He is hardly represented in Britain, but an exhibition of 112 of his pictures at the Tate Gallery in 1972 attracted much attention. F. G. Kersting was a friend of Friedrich.
The Watzmann
1824-25 Oil on canvas, 135 x 170 cm Nationalgalerie, Berlin Throughout his life, Friedrich demonstrated himself to be closely attached to his home. His numerous trips and walking tours to central Germany, Silesia, Bohemia, Greifswald, Neubrandenburg and Regen never actually took him very far away. He never visited southern Germany, for example, and his painting of The Watzmann - a mountain near Berchtesgaden, portrayed here rising like a Gothic cathedral in its stone majesty - was inspired by a watercolour by his pupil August Heinrich. It also rivalled a painting by Adrian Ludwig Richter of the same title, which went on show in Dresden in 1824 and was intended to back up Richter's application for the professorship in landscape painting at the Academy, the post to which Friedrich also aspired. Despite its apparent fidelity to nature, the painting reveals a somewhat fantastical element in its mixture of different geological formations and its unnatural ratios of scale. Artist: FRIEDRICH, Caspar David Title: The Watzmann , painting Date: 1801-1850 German : landscape