Caspar David Friedrich was born in Greifswald on this day in 1774, on the Baltic coast, where the horizon is a long flat line and the light comes off the water for most of the year.

Look at the second painting below: a man in a dark green coat, seen from behind, one hand on a stick, standing on rock above fog. You never get his face. Friedrich does this again and again \u2014 the back of a head, a shoulder, a hat. It is not coldness. It is an invitation to stand where he stands. And notice the craquelure across the surface, that fine web: the paint has aged into a skin, the way plaster does.

The method is patient. A pale ground, then thin glazes laid over it, so the light does not sit on the picture but seems to rise from underneath it. The horizon is set low and everything above it is sky. In the first image the figure at the water's edge is barely a mark, a dark robe on pale sand, and the sea is a single dark band. Scale does the work. Nothing is explained to you.

He worked slowly, made drawings outdoors and paintings indoors, from memory and study. He died in 1840, well out of fashion by then, and was found again decades later. The pictures waited. They are good at waiting.