Caspar David Friedrich in His Studio

c. 1812

Oil on canvas, 53.5 × 41 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

The landscape painter is shown at work in a Dresden room stripped almost bare. It is one of three studio portraits of him by the same artist, now in Hamburg, Berlin and Mannheim.

The two were friends from 1810; Hokanson and Seidenstein (Met) describe their joint sketching trips.
Look at the walls: two palettes, a straightedge and a drawing triangle are all that hang there. Shutters close half of one window and all of the other.
He holds brushes, palette and a mahlstick, a rod that steadies the hand, before a canvas turned away from us.
The bare studio suggests painting from the inner eye, not from the view outside. The sitter held that a painter should paint what he sees within himself.
Bought in 1906 from Johanna Friedrich of Greifswald, a descendant of the sitter, after the Berlin Centenary Exhibition brought it to notice.

Image: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Alte Nationalgalerie · Public Domain Mark 1.0