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The bare tree, devoid of branches, rises into the sky. The only delicate shoots are sprouting from the lichen-covered trunk. This tree is from Caspar David Friedrich’s home region, sketched while he was visiting Swedish Pomerania. He has carefully documented the tree in pencil, not just conveying the tree’s physiognomy, but its very essence – a portrait of an old tree, battered by the wind and weather.

In his studies, Friedrich meticulously recorded the things he saw in nature. In contrast, he often freely composed the landscapes in his pictures as, for example, in his Dolmen by the Sea also on show here. Although the composition is his own invention, he has created it by combining elements from his nature studies in his sketch books, just like the tree from his home region, replanted here on a rough coastline. The two other oaks are similarly taken from one of his sketchbooks. The tree on the right is composed from two different sketches of trees, with the lower trunk from one sketch fused with the top of a tree drawn at a different place. In this picture, Friedrich has also included a formation of stones from his sketchbook. And for the plants in the foreground, he went back to studies made a good ten years before! Even the tiniest details were not simply invented: he copied the birds, for example, from earlier sketches as well. This all goes to show how Friedrich, as a young draughtsman, pursued a method he later continued as a painter.