Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) reimagined European landscape painting by portraying nature as a setting for profound spiritual and emotional encounters. Working in the vanguard of the German Romantic movement, which championed a radical new understanding of the bond between nature and the inner self, Friedrich developed pictorial subjects and strategies that emphasize the individuality, intimacy, open endedness, and complexity of our responses to the natural world. The vision of the landscape that unfolds in his art—meditative, mysterious, and full of wonder—is still vital today.

Presented in honor of the 250th anniversary of Friedrich’s birth in 2024, Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature is the first comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the artist held in the United States. Organized in cooperation with the Alte Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and Hamburger Kunsthalle, with unprecedented loans from more than 30 lenders in Europe and North America, the exhibition will present approximately 75 works by Friedrich. 

Oil paintings, finished drawings, and working sketches from every phase of the artist’s career, along with select examples by his contemporaries, will illuminate how Friedrich developed a symbolic vocabulary of landscape motifs to convey the personal and existential meanings that he discovered in nature. 

The exhibition will situate Friedrich’s art within the tumultuous politics and vibrant culture of 19th-century German society and, by extension, highlight the role of German Romanticism in shaping modern perceptions of the natural world.

Credit: Overview from museum website

Image credit: Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774–1840). Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, ca. 1817. Oil on canvas, 37 3/8 × 29 1/2 in. (94.8 × 74.8 cm). Hamburger Kunsthalle, on permanent loan from the Stiftung Hamburger Kunstsammlungen, acquired 1970 (HK-5161). Photo Elke Walford​​​