Friedrich was a 19th century German painter who painted and influenced the Romanticism movement. His paintings often featured the romantic landscapes with a small human element involved. Before Friedrich became known there were very few artists painting landscapes and the genre of landscape wasn’t at all considered as major. With the rising recognition of Friedrich, the genre of landscape became more popular and artists started to paint nature and landscapes. Friedrich’s painting look at landscapes through the lens of the “sublime”. His landscapes are often described as expansive, grand and sometimes thought to bring fear because of the thought of connecting with peoples spiritual side. Friedrich’s landscape paintings would give more meaning to just a normal landscape and would make the nature in the background the main focus of the painting, while still including a human feature. Friedrich is now often seen as the most important painter of German Romanticism.

All of these images show how Friedrich made nature and landscape more important than the human aspect of his paintings. He included a lot more nature, with trees and rocks and sometimes old broken buildings and would only add one or two people to the painting who were almost admiring the nature around them and the sky above them. Whether it was the moon or the sunset.