Caspar David Friedrich Art

Caspar David Friedrich (Born 1774) was born in Greifswald, Swedish Pomerania. He was the sixth of ten children. He grew up under the strict Lutheran doctrine of his father Adolf Gottlieb, who was an affluent soap boiler and candle-maker. Friedrich experienced so many deaths in his family when he was still very young: his mother died when he was just seven. His brother died when he was just 13. He witnessed his other brother fall through the ice of a frozen lake and drown. His sister died in 1782, and in 1791 his second sister succumbed to typhus. The melancholy in his art is attributed by some of Friedrich's contemporaries to these childhood tragic events, yet it is as likely that his personality was naturally so inclined. Just as his letters always contained self-irony and humor. Friedrich was indeed a strange mixture of temperament, his moods ranging from the gayest humor to the gravest seriousness. Friedrich was keenly interested in 17th Century Dutch landscape painting. In 1798 he settled in Dresden permanently. Friedrich often drew works, mainly topographical and naturalistic, with sepia ink, watercolor and India ink. It is not clear when he finally took up oil painting, but it was probably after the age of thirty. His preferred subject was Landscapes, inspired by frequent trips to the Harz Mountains, Bohemia, the Riesen Mountains and the Baltic coast. His paintings depict morning mists, woods, harbors, hills, and light effects based on a close observation of nature. His paintings are mostly based on the landscapes of northern Germany. That’s why framed Caspar David Friedrich art are so popular in Germany. The paintings provided topographical information and were made almost exclusively in pencil, and the subtle atmospheric effects were rendered from memory.