Caspar David Friedrich

romanticism

Caspar David Friedrich Paintings 1774 - 1840 German Painter, Romanticism

The Chasseur in the Forest, 1814

Oil on canvas, 25 7/8 x 18 1/2 inches (66 x 47 cm)

Private collection

Mountain and Forest Paintings

12 from 25

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OIL PAINTING: The Chasseur in the Forest, 1814
The French occupation of Germany was also the period of Friedrich's first success, much of which he owed to his adoption of specifically nationalist themes. The Gothic church, ruined or decayed, acquired a particular meaning for him, as did the German forest. When in 1814 he celebrated the expulsion of the French, it was with The Chasseur in the Forest, a haunting image of a solitary French dragoon lost in a wood of evergreens. It is a compassionate painting: the invader's fate is just and inevitable, but also sad, and seems to belong to the same higher natural destiny as the forest's vigorous growth.