FRIEDRICH, Caspar David (Greifswald, 1774 – Dresden, 1840)
Born in Greifswald, in western Pomerania, Friedrich was taught drawing and painting by Johann Gottfried Quistorp around 1790. Thanks to Quistorp, a professor at the University of Greifswald, he also came across the poems by the protestant minister Ludwig Theobul Kosegarten, who advocated a religious and exalted experience of nature. From 1794 to 1798 Friedrich attended courses at the Fine Arts Academy in Copenhagen. Having returned to Greifswald, he settled permanently in Dresden, the capital of Saxony, in the autumn of 1798.
During his initial years in Dresden, Friedrich made mostly drawings and gave private lessons. From 1803, he executed landscapes in sepia, which earned him his first success. In 1805, he obtained, with two of his sepias, the second prize in the exhibition of the Weimarer Kunstfreunde.
Friedrich took up oil painting rather late in his career, and he did not use it in a continuous form until 1807. The Cross in the Mountain—also known as The Altar of Tetschen—dates from 1808, and was strongly criticised by chamberlain Basilius von Ramdohr for its distancing from the classical landscape. In 1810 Friedrich presented at the Berlin Kunstausstellung two of his most important paintings: Monk by the Sea and Abbey in the Oak Wood. In them—as became usual in his later work—the strong contrast between the highly outlined foreground and the intangible background plunges the beholder into meditation. Both paintings were bought by Fredrick William of Prussia, and the painter was appointed a member of the Kunstakademie of Berlin.
During the Napoleonic wars, Friedrich shared the strong nationalist feeling of the time. He showed three of his most politicised landscapes at the Exhibition of Patriotic Art held in Dresden in 1814, on the occasion of the liberation of the city. Although Friedrich travelled often, particularly to his native region, to make drawings and sketches, he refused to visit Italy, as he considered that country alien to the interests of German art.
In 1816 Friedrich was appointed a member of the Kunstakademie in Dresden, and two years later he married Caroline Bommer. In 1824 he was appointed extraordinary professor without chair at the Kunstakademie in Dresden. The following years Friedrich continued to paint and exhibit in cities such as Hamburg, Berlin, Bremen, Copenhagen, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Hannover etc. The heir Prince Fredrick William of Prussia visited his studio in 1830. A few years later, in 1835, he suffered a stroke which forced him to abandon oil painting.
Friedrich died on 7 May 1840 in Dresden, at the age of sixty-five.
Juan Á. López-Manzanares
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