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The idea for Friedrich’s Woman at the Window may also have come to him during a visit to Dresden’s Paintings Gallery. The picture possibly inspiring him is further to the right: Gerard ter Borch’s Lady in White Satin from 1654. In both paintings, women with their hair up are dressed in long gowns and have their backs towards us. Friedrich, though, also deviates from the Dutch painting. Rather than looking into a dark room, his figure gazes outwards into a bright landscape. Moreover, while Gerard ter Borch renders the gleaming white silk meticulously, Friedrich paints the green material of the dress so finely and lightly the underdrawing almost shimmers through.

In taking motifs from Old Master paintings, Friedrich actually contradicts his own stated views. In 1830, he noted, “Anyone with a mind of their own does not copy others.”

In fact, Friedrich was long regarded as an exceptional artist creating, as it were, an entirely new oeuvre from nothing. But as we see, even he needed some role models in art – which in no way diminishes the value of what he created.

Here, at the same time, Friedrich has again taken a scene from his daily life. Most likely, the setting is his studio apartment at the river where he lived for many years in our direct vicinity. His model might well be his wife Caroline, standing relaxed as she looks out of the window.

When they married in 1818, Friedrich was already in his mid-forties. In a letter written shortly afterwards, he expressed his amazement at his new circumstances in life: “Since the I has turned into We, many things have changed. We eat more, we drink more, we sleep more, we laugh more, we joke more.”