Caspar David Friedrich

Caspar David Friedrich's paintings use landscape to organize the relationship between a viewer, a figure, and the surrounding world. People seen from behind often face mountains, sea, or distant light, drawing attention toward what lies beyond them. Wanderer above the Sea of Fog makes this arrangement clear through a figure on a rocky height and the obscured landscape below. The Monk by the Sea gives a much smaller figure a position against broad expanses of shore, water, and sky, changing the balance between human presence and open space. Other works use ruins, bare trees, or rising and setting light to structure different encounters with nature. His drawings record closely studied natural forms, while the paintings combine precise observation with deliberate composition. Landscape becomes a constructed relationship of distances, silhouettes, and viewpoints, rather than a simple transcription of an uninterrupted view.