Caspar David Friedrich Paintings

About Caspar David Friedrich

Caspar David Friedrich, the German Romantic landscape painter who lived from 1774 to 1840, is generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. His often symbolic and anti-classical work conveys a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. Friedrich's paintings set contemplative human figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins, and the art historian Christopher John Murray described that presence, in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, as reducing the figures to a scale that directs the viewer's gaze toward their metaphysical dimension.

The scale is the method, and one canvas states it first. In the picture he is best known by, painted in 1818, in the early decades of the 19th century, a figure stands upon a rocky precipice with his back to the viewer, gazing out on ground covered in a thick sea of fog through which other ridges, trees and mountains pierce, and the fog stretches into the distance indefinitely. Romanticism, the artistic and intellectual movement that began in Europe toward the end of the 18th century, argued for subjectivity, imagination and the appreciation of nature in response to the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, and this German painter's pictures are the case for that argument in oil. The same figure seen from behind, the same low light and the same silence return across the collection, in a monk at the edge of the water, two men who stop on a path to watch the moon, a single oak left bare in snow.

Series and periods

Friedrich held to a few motifs for a lifetime, so the collection reads better by motif than by year, and the groups below follow the categories this collection has always used.

• Allegorical landscapes: the symbolic pictures, where the scenery carries a reading of the human condition and a small group is set against the vastness of nature. Titles here: The Stages of Life, The Chasseur in the Forest, Landscape with Rainbow, Easter Morning.
• Contemplative figures and night skies: people seen from behind, gazing up at the night sky or out into the distance, which is the arrangement art history knows him by. Titles here: The Wanderer, Two Men Contemplating the Moon, Woman at a Window, The Monk by the Sea.
• Gothic ruins and barren trees: the melancholy group, bare branches and old stone, where the transience of a human life is set beside the endurance of the ground it stands on. Titles here: The Tree of Crows, Oak Tree in the Snow, Graveyard under Snow, The Gazebo.
• Morning mists and seascapes: the atmospheric pictures, where mist, moonlight and open water are the subject and the town or the ship is only the measure of it. Titles here: Neubrandenburg in the Morning Mist, Seashore with Shipwreck by Moonlight, Twilight at Seaside, Ships at the Port of Greifswald.
• Winter and snow: the cold pictures, snow over open ground and firs under weight, painted with very little color and almost no incident. Titles here: Winter Landscape, Cabin in the Snow, Fir Trees in the Snow.
• Altar and mountain: the commission that put a crucifix where the scenery usually goes. Titles here: Cross in the Mountains (Tetschen Altar).

Most famous works

These are the Friedrich titles people ask for most in this collection, ordered by the traffic each one draws and by what actually sells. Each name opens its own page, where you choose the size and decide on a frame. Every one is painted in oil after Friedrich, to order, and no two hands read a brushstroke the same way.

• The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog: the 1818 painting of a man standing upon a rocky precipice with his back to the viewer. He is gazing out on ground covered in thick fog, through which other ridges, trees and mountains pierce, and which stretches out into the distance indefinitely
• The Monk by the Sea: one contemplative figure at the edge of the water, silhouetted exactly as art history describes this painter, with water and sky taking nearly the whole canvas
• Chalk Cliffs on Rügen: the white chalk cliffs of the island of Rügen read from above, with walkers at the lip of the drop and open water beyond them
• The Tree of Crows: one bare oak, bent and hollowed, with crows in the branches, from the group of barren trees that runs through Friedrich's work
• Two Men Contemplating the Moon: two men who have stopped on a path to watch the moon, seen from behind against the night sky, and the picture that gave the pairing its name
• The Stages of Life: a group on a shore with ships offshore, read as an allegory of a human life and the stages it passes through
• The Chasseur in the Forest: a lone chasseur standing before a wall of fir trees, small against the dark of the wood and turned away from us
• Cross in the Mountains (Tetschen Altar): also known as the Tetschen Altar, a crucifix raised on a mountain summit against the light, a religious subject given the shape of a wide view
• Seashore with Shipwreck by Moonlight: a broken hull on the shore under the moon, the whole scene lit from one low source
• Winter Landscape: snow over open ground, one of the winter subjects he came back to with almost no color at all
• Neubrandenburg in the Morning Mist: the town of Neubrandenburg behind morning mist, one of the morning mists his painting is known for
• Woman at a Window: a woman seen from behind at an open window, looking out, turned away from the viewer like almost everyone in this painter's pictures
• The Gazebo: a garden gazebo standing empty, from the quieter architectural end of the collection
• Landscape with Rainbow: a rainbow thrown across dark country, the kind of natural sign his symbolic pictures are built on
• Oak Tree in the Snow: one oak, bare, standing in snow, the barren tree on its own as the entire subject
• Graveyard under Snow: gravestones under snow, the transience of a human life set against ground that outlasts it
• Fir Trees in the Snow: firs close in and weighted with snow, painted without a horizon to escape to
• Twilight at Seaside: open water at twilight, the hour when his light carries the most
• Ships at the Port of Greifswald: masts and hulls at anchor in the port of Greifswald, the harbor subject at rest
• The Grosse Gehege near Dresden: the Grosse Gehege, the parkland near Dresden, water and sky across a very wide view
• Cabin in the Snow: a cabin in deep winter, and very little else in the frame
• Easter Morning: people on a road on Easter morning, bare trees to either side of them

Browse by subject

The motifs run through other collections of ours, and each one is a different door into the same painter. Every count below is the number of titles in that collection today, so you can see how large the genre around Friedrich actually is.

• Romanticism: 5,217 works, the artistic and intellectual movement that began in Europe at the end of the 18th century to argue for subjectivity, imagination and the appreciation of nature, against the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Friedrich is one of the German names the movement is read through, and his scenery belongs to its first generation.
• Landscape paintings: 8,004 canvases, the genre in which the main subject is a wide view of natural scenery, mountains, valleys, rivers, trees and forests, with sky almost always in the view and weather often an element of the composition. The mists, the cliffs, the snowfields and the wide views over parkland all sit here.
• Seascape paintings: 4,178 titles, figurative work that draws its main inspiration from the sea, a genre particularly strong from the 17th to the 19th centuries and stretched in practice to cover shipping on rivers and estuaries, beach scenes and anything with a boat in it. The shore pictures, the wreck by moonlight, the twilight water and the ships at Greifswald.
• Tree paintings: 4,858 pieces, The bare oaks, the crow tree and the fir stands, gathered by the motif he never let go of.
• Religious paintings: 3,084 paintings, the visual representation of religious ideas and their relationship with humans, with sacred art the part of it made for worship and religious practice. Cross in the Mountains belongs here, the mountain altar that made a wide view carry a crucifix.
• Symbolism: 819 works, the artistic use of a concrete element, an object, a figure, an image or an action, to point at a deeper or non-literal meaning. His work is described as often symbolic, and the rainbow, the cross, the ruin and the bare tree are the objects doing that pointing.
• The 100 most famous paintings of all time: one canvas by Friedrich sit on this list, our reading of the best known paintings in art history, the 1818 canvas of the man on the precipice.

The full list of painters we reproduce in oil is on the artist index.

How each reproduction is painted

Nothing here is stock. When you order, an artist paints that title in oil on canvas in the size you picked, layer by layer, and you see a photograph of the finished painting and approve it before it leaves the studio. Friedrich goes to artists used to thin atmosphere and low light, because the mist is the hard part of this painter and not the outline. Seven sizes are available and the frame is optional, so the same picture can be a small study by a desk or the one thing on a wall. Shipping is free worldwide and returns stay open for 90 days.

Frequently asked questions

Which Caspar David Friedrich painting is the most famous?

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, painted in 1818. It is the one visitors open most here, it is the single Friedrich on our list of the 100 most famous paintings, and it is the first picture people reach for when they say Romantic landscape.

What does Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog show?

A man standing upon a rocky precipice with his back to the viewer. He gazes out on a landscape covered in thick fog, and other ridges, trees and mountains pierce through it and stretch into the distance indefinitely.

Where are Friedrich's originals?

In museums. Caspar David Friedrich lived from 1774 to 1840, and the canvases that survive hang in public museum collections in Europe. That is the plain reason hand-painted reproductions exist: the museum that owns a picture is not going to lend it to you, and a photographic print of it is a poster, not a painting.

What is Romanticism?

The artistic and intellectual movement that began in Europe toward the end of the 18th century. It argued for subjectivity, imagination and the appreciation of nature in response to the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, and this German Romantic painter is the one that argument is usually read through in landscape.

Which Friedrich should I start with?

If you want the picture everyone knows, take the 1818 wanderer on the precipice. If you want the quiet one, take the monk at the edge of the water or the two men watching the moon. If you want the cold, take a winter scene, the cabin or the oak in snow. If you want the symbolic Friedrich, take the rainbow or the mountain cross.

Are these original Caspar David Friedrich paintings?

No. Each one is a new painting, made by hand in oil on canvas after Friedrich's composition. It is a reproduction, not a print, and not the original canvas.

What sizes and frames can I order?

Every Friedrich reproduction here comes in seven sizes, with an optional frame. You see a photo of the finished oil painting and approve it before it ships, worldwide shipping is free, and returns stay open for 90 days.