Caspar David Friedrich, The Monk by the Sea, c. 1809 (via might)
How wonderful it is to sit completely alone by the sea under an overcast sky, gazing out over the endless expanse of water. It is essential that one has come there just for this reason, and that one has to return. That one would like to go over the sea but cannot; that one misses any sign of life, and yet one senses the voice of life in the rush of the water, in the blowing of the wind, in the drifting of the clouds, in the lonely cry of the birds ... No situation in the world could be more sad and eerie than this—as the only spark of life in the wide realm of death, a lonely center in a lonely circle.
Heinrich von Kleist, "Different Feelings about a Seascape by Friedrich on which is a Capuchin Monk," c. 1810
Friedrich himself does not even know what he will paint; he waits for the moment of inspiration, which (in his own words) occasionally comes in a dream.
Schukowski, "Letter on Caspar David Friedrich, 1821
Caspar David Friedrich, Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon, 1830–5
What the newer landscape artists see in a circle of a hundred degrees in Nature they press together unmercifully into an angle of vision of only forty-five degrees. And furthermore, what is in Nature separated by large spaces, is compressed into a cramped space and overfills and oversatiates the eye, creating an unfavorable and disquieting effect on the viewer.
Caspar David Friedrich, "On Landscape Painting," c. 1820
Caspar David Friedrich, The Cross Beside The Baltic, 1815
For some time I sat upon the rock that overlooks the sea of ice... The surface is very uneven, rising like the waves of a troubled sea.
Mary Shelley, "The Sea of Ice" from Frankenstein, 1818
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Caspar David Friedrich, Seashore with Shipwreck by Moonlight, 1825-30 (via artmastered)
nickkahler reblogged
Caspar David Friedrich, Waft of Mist, c. 1818-20 (via adanvcadanvc)
I am not so weak as to submit to the demands of the age when they go against my convictions. I spin a cocoon around myself; let others do the same. I shall leave it to time to show what will come of it: a brilliant butterfly or maggot.
Caspar David Friedrich, Quote from "Art Born in the Fullness of Age," 1987
Caspar David Friedrich, Ruins of Eldena near Greifswald, 1825