Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) was the most important German romantic painter. Even his person embodied the typical romantic: He was more introverted, Environmentalist and religious, he saw nature as a mirror of human emotions. In his meticulously painted paintings Friedrich reached an incomparable metaphysical transparency.

The painter should not just paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees in himself. "With this recommendation to his painter colleagues, Caspar David Friedrich explained the driving force and the meaning of his paintings.

The Landscapes takes in his work a prominent position. Friedrich undertook with friends long hikes through the mountains and along the coast. He experienced man in his smallness compared with the immense power of nature. The solitary figures look longingly in vast landscapes with distant horizon. Consult often the viewer back on, so that this can empathize with them. Using symbolic metaphor, the moon as the universe and tree stumps as an indication of transience, he produced contemplative romantic feelings and religious sentiments. With its natural moods Friedrich wanted to gain insight into the human soul.

At the age of 24, after an academic training in Copenhagen, drew it the young artists to Dresden. In the Elbe a crossroads formed around him, and other painters and poets such as Tieck and Schlegel to the center of the early Romantic period. The characteristic of the Romance is the mutual impact of poetry and painting. Friedrich's landscapes are visually mirror the feelings and seek to express what the poetry with words. "Internally, the mysterious path leads. In us, or nowhere, eternity with its worlds, the past and future." So said the poet Novalis expressed representative of the early Romantics.

Representation of typical scenes of daily life in painting, which can distinguish between peasant, bourgeois and courtly themes.

The genre reached its peak and immense popularity in the Dutch painting of the 17th century. In the 18th century, especially in France, the courtly and gallant painting comes to the fore while in Germany the bourgeois character was emphasised.

The mental attitude which spilled over from literature and philosophy to visual arts, established in about 1800 but which failed to produce its own style in visual arts.

The art of Romanticism was determined by content, relevant attitude to life and the sensations triggered by it. Inwardness and feelings, imagination and dream, world and nature, the power of myth and striving into infinity became central themes. The specific area of Romantic art lies in the painting and drawing. The landscape, as a theme that is constanly turned to, always moves to the forefront: man and nature are in relationship with each other, reflect the moods. Besides a new nature feeling there was a renewal of the religious attitude and a return to the past, tradition, history, old legends, fairy tales, as well as to the art of old masters and epochs. Especially in the case of Germany these was strongly national-oriented art.

Main representatives in Germany include among others: C.D. Friedrich, P.O. Runge, J.A. Koch, M. v. Schwind, and also the Nazarene group of artists. French Romanticism, which was characterized by other trends than the German, is represented mainly by the art of Delacroix.

The Romantic period lasted until around 1830.