Caspar David Friedrich (Born 1774) was born in Germany (formerly in Greifswald, Pomerania). He was one of the leading artists of the German Romantic movement. He studied from 1794 to 1798 in one of the most progressive art schools of the day - the Copenhagen Academy. Friedrich’s mysterious, vast, atmospheric seascapes and landscapes did much to establish the idea of the Sublime as a concern central to Romanticism and also proclaimed human helplessness against the forces of nature. Friedrich was taught by many painters, but the school did not offer a course in painting. Friedrich was a talented student and he began his education at the academy by making copies of casts from antique sculptures, and then proceeded to drawing from life.
He was keenly interested in 17th century Dutch landscape painting, to which he was able access from Copenhagen's Royal Picture Gallery. In 1805, his drawings in sepia won half of the prize from the Weimar Art Society and the approval of poet J.W. von Goethe. The Cross in the Mountains, Friedrich’s first important oil painting, established his mature style that was characterized by an overpowering sense of isolation and stillness, and was an attempt at replacing the traditional symbology of religious painting with one that’s drawn from nature. Friedrich suffered two strokes: one in 1835 and the other in 1837. These caused him almost complete paralysis. By 1838, Friedrich was almost incapable of artistic work, and was increasingly dependent on the charity of friends. He died in May 1840.
