Forêt en fin d'automne

Caspar David Friedrich painted this in 1835, the year a stroke left him partly paralysed and all but ended his life as a painter. By then he was out of fashion. The bright Romantic mood of his youth had passed, younger artists wanted brisk realism, and he was living poor and largely forgotten in Dresden. A late forest at the turn of the year suited him. The leaves are nearly gone, the light is thin, and the season is the one just before winter closes in. He would die five years later, having painted very little more.