a German landscape painter and a Professor at the Academy of Arts, Berlin. His distinctive style was characteristic of the Romantic ideals of natural beauty. After a short study trip to Dresden, he returned to Berlin and became a decorator for the Royal Theater. He married in 1824 and became a member of the Berlin Artists' Association in 1827. Later that year, he was dismissed from the Theater because of an ongoing dispute with singer Henriette Sontag. After that, he tried to support himself as a free-lance artist. In 1828, he took a study trip to the Baltic Sea, followed by a trip to Italy which produced hundreds of sketches that were later elaborated in his Berlin studio. He had been deeply impressed by the landscapes there and altered his entire manner of painting to reflect what he had seen.
