Works by Caspar David Friedrich

Caspar David Friedrich often painted people from behind, small against mist, night skies, bare trees or ruins, looking out at the land as if in our place.

After study in Copenhagen, Friedrich settled in Dresden in 1798 and for years worked mainly in ink, watercolour and sepia. In the sepia Rock Arch in the Uttewalder Grund, of about 1801, two tiny figures stand under a rock arch at the foot of a gorge lit from above. By 1804 he had also made four woodcuts, cut from his designs by his brother. In The Woman with the Spider Web between Bare Trees, of 1803, a woman shading her eyes sits among thistles, a spider's web strung in the branches above her.

He sketched on trips to the Baltic coast and mountains, nearly always in pencil; in mid-career he painted light and atmosphere from memory. In Two Men Contemplating the Moon, of 1819–20, two men in long coats, one resting an arm on the other's shoulder, watch a thin crescent through the branches of a leaning tree. Bare oaks, as in the Tree of Crows of about 1822, usually stand for death. Woman at a Window, of 1822, brings the figure seen from behind indoors: a woman stands at a half-open window in a plain room, a ship's mast beyond.

The Sea of Ice, finished in 1824 and poorly received, heaps floe ice into a jagged peak beside a wrecked ship. From 1826 his colours grew darker and more muted. Most of what follows is land and sea, painted or drawn, with a few prints and several self-portraits.

Sources: Wikipedia, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Alte Nationalgalerie, Louvre, Museum Folkwang, Cleveland Museum of Art, Hamburger Kunsthalle.