Caspar David Friedrich (5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818) is a well known masterpiece of his, suggesting at once mastery over a nature and the insignificance of the individual within it. 

Also known as "The Wreck of Hope" is perhaps a reflection of Friedrich's most tragic experience at the Aged 13, when his younger brother, Johann Christoffer, rescued him from drowning in the icy water, causing Christoffer himself to fall into the frozen lake and perish instead.

The Monk by the Sea was exhibited in its current form at the Berlin Academy in October 1810, to much controversy and criticism: 

- "In its monotony and boundlessness" wrote Kleist, "it has no foreground except the frame, when viewing it, it is as if one's eyelids had been cut away." 

What is most striking in this painting is the abject loneliness and a lack of any consolation in the horizon.