Paintings of the Grindelwald Glacier, and various Norwegian landscapes, he died of typhoid when he was only 39.
Rückenfigur
A Norwegian landscape painter who trained with JC Dahl in Dresden, and who shared themes with the German Romantic painters.
From Friedrich’s ‘Wanderer above the Sea of Mists’ to Carl Friedrich Lessing’s ‘Silesian Landscape’, figures with their back to the viewer.
After training in Copenhagen, he joined Friedrich in Dresden in 1818, and together they dominated German Romantic painting.
Five years of some of his most enduring works, including ‘The Stages of Life’, his enigmatic masterwork.
Despite being one of the leading visual artists of the German Romantic movement, and his young family, he became more solitary, as shown in his paintings.
Born in Swedish Pomerania, studied in Copenhagen, and lived most of his adult life in Dresden. Paintings from early landscapes in 1807 to ‘Chalk Cliffs on Rügen’.
How the Rückenfigur passed from Friedrich via JC Dahl to Thomas Fearnley, then was reborn with Gustave Caillebotte.
Figures in landscape paintings don’t normally stand with their back to the viewer. How the Rückenfigur came to the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich and his pupil Carus.