What nationality was the Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich? The answer is German.
Caspar David Friedrich was a German Romantic painter, best known for monumental landscapes that explore solitude, spirituality and the sublime power of nature. He was born in 1774 in Greifswald, a Baltic town that was then in Swedish Pomerania, within the Holy Roman Empire.
The political geography of his birthplace can create confusion. Greifswald did not belong to the modern German nation-state during Friedrich’s lifetime, and the region was under Swedish rule. Nevertheless, Friedrich was German by cultural and familial identity, and art history classifies him as a leading figure of German Romanticism.
Friedrich studied at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen from 1794 to 1798, then settled in Dresden, where he spent most of his career. His paintings, including Wanderer above the Sea of Fog and The Sea of Ice, use landscapes as emotional and philosophical subjects rather than simple topographical views. He died in Dresden in 1840.