Caspar David Friedrich

Friedrich has come to be recognized in recent years as a giant of the Romantic movement and as one of the great figures of 19th-century art. His works have a haunting quality that is the product of an elaborate and consistent system of symbolism. His favourite motifs, mountainous landscapes with solitary figures, ruins of chapels and oak trees, and rendered with mystical light and religious intensity. The elements which make up a traditional landscape painting - the impression of high and low, near and far, light and dark, summer and winter - are all used symbolically. Every vast seascape, mountain peak or blasted tree expresses a truth about human life and the Christian hope for life to come. Friedrich's message is never obvious and it is an indefinable sense of mystery, as well as a profoundly emotional response to nature, which make him perhaps the truest Romantic among landscape painters. This study discusses in detail 68 chosen works, elucidating their artistic qualities and guiding the reader toward a fuller understanding of their symbolic content. An essay on Friedrich's life and work serves as an introduction.