A Waterfall. Study

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.

1820

Trip to Italy at the prince's invitation

Prince Christian Frederik, then in Italy, invites Dahl to join him at the Gulf of Naples; the artist, who was courting Emilie von Bloch at the time, marries her hurriedly and sets off the next day. He spends ten months in Italy (other accounts have the journey lasting until 1823), and it is there, in the strong southern light, that his art truly flowers.

1820

Admitted to the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts

Dahl is accepted into the Dresden academy two years after arriving in the city.

12 June 1820

Married: Emilie von Block

February 1821

Rome: museums, acquaintances and landscapes for sale

In February 1821 Dahl goes to Rome, spending much time in museums, meeting other artists and painting pictures to sell, among them landscapes inspired by the mountains of Norway. He said that only in Rome did he truly come to appreciate Norwegian nature.