Caspar David Friedrich (1774 - 1840) was born in Pomerania, then part of Sweden. He studied at the University of Greifswald and the Copenhagen Academy. He settled in Dresden, and associated with its circle of Romantic scholars and poets. He often visited his homeland and toured Germany.

Friedrich established a reputation for landscape drawings and sepias before painting in oils. In 1808-12 he exhibited large-scale works such as the 'Cross in the Mountains' (Dresden). He was elected to the Berlin Academy in 1810, the Dresden Academy in 1816. In 1824 he was appointed Associate Professor of Landscape Painting at the Dresden Academy.

His later years were plagued by illness, and he painted little after a stroke in 1835. - National Gallery