Caspar David Friedrich
Caspar David Friedrich (September 5, 1774 - May 7, 1840)
was a 19th century German romantic painter, considered by many
critics to be one of the finest representatives of the movement.
After the development of sepia drawings and watercolours (mainly
naturalistic and topographical), Friedrich took up oil painting
after the age of thirty. His paintings were modeled on his sketches
and studies of scenic spots, like the cliffs on Rügen, the
surroundings of Dresden or Elbe and later composed in symbolic,
often symmetrically balanced, compositions. His first mature style
painting is the "Tetschen Altar" (1807) in which the crucified
Christ is seen in profile in the top of a mountain, alone,
surrounded by nature. In his time this work was not unanimously
accepted for the principal role of landscape in a religious
subject, however, this was his first appraised painting.
Friedrich's masterpieces were almost forgotten by the general
public in the second half of 19th century and only at the end of
19th and beginning of 20th century he was rediscovered by Symbolist
painters for his visionary and allegorical landscapes. For that
same reason Max Ernst and other surrealists saw him as a precursor
of their movement.
As well as other romantic painters like
J.
M. W. Turner or
John Constable
he made landscape oil painting a major genre in western art.
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