Siddende mandlig model

1790–1794

Kosegarten: nature as a revelation of God

As a private student of Quistorp, who takes his pupils out to draw in the open air, Friedrich is encouraged from an early age to sketch from life. Through his teacher he meets the theologian Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten, who taught that nature was a revelation of God, and comes to know the work of Adam Elsheimer.

1794–1798

Copenhagen: casts, life drawing and Dutch landscape painters

At the prestigious Copenhagen Academy Friedrich begins by copying casts of antique sculpture before moving on to drawing from life, and the Royal Picture Gallery opens up to him 17th-century Dutch landscape painting. His teachers Lorentzen and Juel, inspired by Sturm und Drang, stand at a midpoint between the budding Romantic aesthetic and the waning neoclassical ideal.

after 1798

The Dresden Romantics: Tieck, Novalis, Kleist, Runge

Friedrich grows close to a circle of Romantics that includes Ludwig Tieck, Novalis, Heinrich von Kleist and Philipp Otto Runge, and he is also a friend of the natural philosopher and painter Carl Gustav Carus. Together with Runge he is regarded as the foremost representative of early German Romanticism and the leader of the Dresden Romantics.

1798 · Virkested

Dresden

1798–1804

Etchings and woodcuts

In Dresden Friedrich experiments with etching and makes designs for woodcuts that his furniture-maker brother cuts: by 1804 he has produced 18 etchings and four woodcuts, apparently in small numbers and distributed only to friends. His main media remain ink, watercolour and sepia, and he does not work extensively in oils until his reputation is more established.