Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) was a German Romantic landscape painter. Friedrich studied art in Copenhagen. He was disillusioned with the materialist Europe, and like William Turner and John Constable, he tried to point to the divine beauty of nature and discourage superficiality, which we see his breath-taking allegorical paintings of nature: Giant or Lone Tree. His works served as an inspiration to Expressionists and Surrealists . The decline in his popularity after World War II was in part due to the Nazis, who perverted the meaning of his works to favour their nationalistic ideals. Some of his works were destroyed in the fire of the Munich Glass Palace or the bombing of Dresden. Friedrich died in poverty in Dresden on May 7th, 1840, where he was also buried.