Private Before-Hours Tour of “Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) reimagined European landscape painting by portraying nature as a setting for profound spiritual and emotional encounters. Working in the vanguard of the German Romantic movement, which championed a radical new understanding of the bond between nature and the inner self, Friedrich developed pictorial subjects and strategies
that emphasize the individuality, intimacy, and complexity of our responses to the natural world. The vision of the landscape that unfolds in his art, meditative, mysterious, and full of wonder, is still vital today.

Members and patrons of AFL convened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art prior to opening hours to tour this exhibition. The tour was led by the co-curators of the exhibition, Dr. Alison Hokanson, Curator, European Paintings, and Dr. Joanna Sheers Seidenstein, Assistant Curator, Northern European Drawings, Prints, and Illustrated Books at The Met. The exhibition featured oil paintings, drawings, and working sketches from every phase of the artist’s career with unprecedented loans from more than 30 lenders in Europe and North America, including the Louvre, which lent Le cimetière sous la lune.