Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape

Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape by Joseph Leo Koerner. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780300049268.

Caspar David Friedrich (1774â 1840) is heralded as the greatest painter of the Romantic movement in Germany, and Europeâ s first truly modern artist. His mysterious and melancholy landscapes, often peopled with lonely wanderers, are experiments in a radically subjective artistic perspectiveâ one in which, as Freidrich wrote, the painter depicts not â what he sees before him, but what he sees within him.â This vulnerability of the individual when confronted with nature became one of the key tenets of the Romantic aesthetic. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Now available in a compact, accessible format, this beautifully illustrated book is the most comprehensive account ever published in English of one of the most fascinating and influential nineteenth-century painters. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â â This is a model of interpretative art history, taking in a good deal of German Romantic philosophy, but founded always on the immediate experience of the picture. . . . It is rare to find a scholar so obviously in sympathy with his subject.â â Independent