Wolkenstudie

1818

Friendship with Caspar David Friedrich

Friedrich, fourteen years his senior, helps him establish himself in the city and becomes a close friend: the two share a love of nature and a profound contempt for academic clichés. Together with Friedrich and Carl Gustav Carus, Dahl will become one of the Dresden painters who exerted a decisive influence on German Romantic painting.

September 1818

Moves to Dresden

Having received a special stipend from Prince Christian Frederik, Dahl travels to Saxony and settles in Dresden, bringing letters of introduction to the city's leading citizens and artists. That same year he writes to the prince that he is representing nature above all in its freedom and wildness.

12. juni 1820

Married: Emilie von Block

1827

His wife Emilie dies in childbirth

Emilie Dahl dies in childbirth while bearing their fourth child.

januar 1830

Married: Amalie von Bassewitz

December 1830

His second wife Amalie dies in childbirth

Amalie von Bassewitz, his student, whom he had married in January, also dies in childbirth. Dahl is crushed and many months pass before he can paint again; some years later the youngest child dies too, leaving Siegwald and Caroline as his two surviving children.