Caspar David Friedrich

Caspar David Friedrich was born in Greifswald in 1774, the sixth of ten children in a family of craftsmen. After studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Friedrich moved to Dresden at the age of 24, which at the time was a European art mecca with its important academy. For Friedrich, who spent most of his life in Dresden, the nearby rocky world of Saxon Switzerland was a place of longing, inspiration and refuge in a world that had fallen apart at the seams.

These were turbulent days - politically, socially, religiously and culturally. Industrialisation is rapidly changing people's living conditions, the Enlightenment is changing the world view. Napoleon and his troops carry the horrors of the French Revolution far into Europe. As a reaction to the new rationalism of the time, a new artistic movement emerges: Romanticism. A turn towards nature, the search for the metaphysical, introspection, the investigation of aesthetic principles: These are some of the characteristics of the new art. Dresden became an important centre for this and Caspar David Friedrich one of its most important representatives.

Threatening, mysterious and both terrifying and attractive: this is how Friedrich often depicted Saxon Switzerland in his paintings. He had found the ideal of a romantic landscape here. The perception of nature as a source of realisation: this was a defining theme for the painter throughout his life. Time and again he sought solitude and silence, not only to see nature and landscape, but to feel them. Pausing, contemplating, feeling: Caspar David Friedrich invites us to do just that.

The 250th anniversary of the artist's birth in 2024 is a wonderful occasion to follow his paths through the region and track down his favourite places.

The artist probably became acquainted with the wildly romantic rocky world of Saxon Switzerland shortly after his arrival through other painters working at the academy, such as the Swiss Adrian Zingg. At that time, the discovery for tourism was still to come. It was not until 1804 that the first travel guide to the region appeared: Wilhelm Leberecht Götzinger's "Schandau und seine Umgebungen oder Beschreibung der sogenannten Sächsischen Schweiz".

Friedrich, already a freelance artist at the time, visited the region several times to hike and draw. There are records of visits in the summer of 1800, 1808 and 1812, and the painter with the distinctive whiskers even lived here for several months at a time from spring to summer 1813. In the tranquil village of Krippen on the Elbe, in the house of his friend Friedrich Gotthelf Kummer, he sought refuge from the war and Napoleon, whom he hated. Saxony is the main theatre of the wars of liberation. Prussians, Russians and French take turns passing through Dresden. The fateful Battle of the Nations at Leipzig is imminent. Creating peaceful landscape impressions in the year of war: This is difficult for the sensitive artist with a tendency towards melancholy, who also sees himself as a patriot and takes a passionate interest in political events. "I have been away from Dresden for more than 14 days and live here in a very pleasant area. The stay here could be very useful for me if the events of the time had not so completely upset my mind and made me unable to start anything," he writes in a letter to a friend on 31 March.

It was not until 1 June that he was able to start again: "After a long time, I drew the first one", he noted in a sketch of a group of trees. More drawings followed, and the "Krippen Sketchbook" was created. 22 of the works created at that time have been preserved. They are filigree and astonishingly detailed depictions of rocks, trees and panoramas. Later he drew on this fund for his paintings. On 3 June 1813, at the foot of the Kaiserkrone table mountain, about an hour and a half's hike from Krippen, he put the drawing "Felsige Kuppe" on paper. It is the very rock on which he places his "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" in his studio a few years later. Other mountains and rocks from earlier sketches from May 1808 can also be found in the picture: the Gamrig near Rathen or the Rosenberg in Bohemian Switzerland. In nature, these mountains are not united in one panorama. Friedrich is not concerned with the reproduction of an actual landscape, a concrete moment, but with a certain impression, an inner feeling. Religion, metaphysics, nature mysticism, psychology: all these resonate in Friedrich's works.

Even in Caspar David Friedrich's time, Dresden artists knew the most impressive valleys and gorges and the paths to them. Friedrich also used these paths. Today's Elbe Sandstone Mountains Malerweg (Painters' Trail) follows many of these historic paths. Hikers can discover the Uttewalder Grund, the Neurathener Felsentor, the Kuhstall and many more of Caspar David Friedrich's motifs along the 116-kilometre long-distance hiking route.  

The Caspar David Friedrich Trail commemorates Friedrich's ‘Flight to Krippen’ in 1813. The trail, which is around 15 kilometres long in total, leads from Krippen along the Mittelhangweg to Schöna with the Kaiserkrone and then over the Wolfsberg and through Reinhardtsdorf back to the starting point. The drawings in the ‘Krippen Sketchbook’ show that the artist must also have travelled along this route.

A special exhibition entitled ‘Topography of Desire - In the Footsteps of Caspar David Friedrich’ will be on display at the StadtMuseum Pirna. The illustrious show is dedicated to today's examination of the artist's time and finds itself in the unique arc of tension between early Romanticism and the realism of our era. Four accompanying events form the supporting programme for this special exhibition, for which a catalogue will also be published.

On January 27, 2024, the special exhibition “Hiking Companions - Following in the footsteps of the Romantics in Saxon Switzerland” opens in the Peter Ulrich House. Based on the hiking guide by Veith & Engelhardt "Mahlerische Wanderen", according to which Caspar David Friedrich planned his hikes, romantic pictures from Tom Pauls' private collection will be on display.

Caspar David Friedrich loved the wildly romantic rocky world not far from the city of Dresden. He repeatedly wandered through nature, seeking solitude and drawing rocks, mountains, trees and ruins. Now, for the first time, there is an exhibition in Saxon Switzerland about the famous romantic, who would have celebrated his 250th birthday in 2024. The immersive show “CDFriedrich inspires” is both a multimedia monument and a virtual gallery. With room-filling video projections, she invites visitors to encounter the painter and his work, to see the landscape through his eyes and to understand the creative process - from the sketch to the painting.

from January 2025 in the guest's house in Bad Schandau

The artist Andrea Molière, who runs the studio on the Malerweg „molière artdesign“ in Lohmen in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, offers themed painting courses for all age groups in small individual groups under her artistic guidance in German and English. The modern, artistic linking of nature and historical painting locations is intended to enable unique experiences and adventures. Special Caspar David Friedrich painting courses are being planned for 2024. The artist will invite small groups of no more than four people to take part in guided painting tours lasting from one to five days. All the necessary utensils are included, from a painting backpack as a seat and a mobile easel to watercolour paper, brushes and paints.

There is an extensive range of courses in 2024, which can be requested directly from the artist. Her rocky, wooded and gorge-rich surroundings along the Malerweg in the heart of the Saxon Switzerland National Park have long inspired her to also walk in the footsteps of Caspar David Friedrich and record her impressions on paper in her own unique way.

Finally, a visit to Dresden is also part of walking in Friedrich's footsteps in the region. The Dresden State Art Collections show one of the largest Friedrich collections in Germany in the Galerie Neue Meister with 14 paintings by the artist.

The Kügelgenhaus – Museum of the Dresdner Romanticism gives an impression of the era in Dresden in the former home of the painter Gerhard von Kügelgen, a friend of Caspar David Friedrich, and presents the lives and works of the most important artistic personalities working in Dresden at the time, including Caspar David Friedrich.