Born in Greifswald, Germany, Caspar Friedrich (1774 - 1840) studied drawing before moving to Denmark. He joined the Royal Academy of Fine Arts from 1794 to 1798 to learn Antique and Classical art. He then moved to Dresden, a city in artistic turmoil, where his landscape drawings were very popular. Friedrich even won a prize at the Weimar competition in 1804. He only began to paint in 1807, specialising in romantic landscapes. The artist gained a solid reputation in the 1810s when his works were purchased by the King of Prussia. At that time he became a member of the Berlin Academy and the Dresden Academy.

In 1817, Friedrich met Carl Gustav Carus, a painter and romantic scholar who wrote nine letters on landscape painting. In these letters one finds the notion that a person who contemplates the nature of the landscape is not only beautiful but also spiritual. It is this vision that inspires Friedrich, who is able to make the crushing of the human being before the beauty of nature as a symbol of God one of the frequent themes of his works, visible in his works The Traveller Contemplating a Sea of Clouds and The Watzmann.

Since his marriage in 1818, Friedrich's work has expanded to include many female figures. His palette was also lighter and more romantic, as if his married life was a break for a while from the dark, negative subjects that had always dominated his work. In 1820, Friedrich received the Grand Duke Nicholas, the future Tsar of Russia, who asked him to paint a Nordic landscape of 'appalling beauty'. The painting, The Shipwreck of Hope (1820), now lost, has been confused with the 1823 painting The Sea of Ice. The painting depicts the sinking and destruction of a ship crushed by blocks of ice and reinvents the themes of death and the all-powerful nature.

Friedrich's interest in his art began to wane and financial problems began to appear along with health problems. After suffering a stroke in 1835, he decided to give up oil painting and later gradually stopped drawing and died in 1840.