Friedrich, Caspar David

(born Sept. 5, 1774, Greifswald, Pomerania—died May 7, 1840, Dresden, Saxony) German painter. He studied at the Copenhagen Academy. After 1798 he settled in Dresden and began his career as a topographical draftsman in pencil and sepia wash. His first important oil painting, The Cross in the Mountains (1807–08), achieves an overwhelming sense of isolation. In 1824 he was appointed professor at the Dresden Academy. His vast, mysterious landscapes and seascapes, proclaiming human helplessness against the forces of nature, did much to establish the sublime as a primary focus of Romanticism. Interest in his work revived with the rise of Symbolism at the beginning of the 20th century.

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