Contributed by Margaret McCann / “The Soul of Nature”at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of many exhibitions dedicated to German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) on the 250th anniversary of his death. Some of his finest are absent – the epic Sea of Ice’s vision of an arctic shipwreck, The Great Enclosure’s resonant view of a Dresden field Napoleon amassed his troops on, or Ruine Eldena, one of Friedrich’s many depictions of the remnants of the powerful Catholic monastery his hometown Griefswald formed around. But there are numerous studies displaying his keen observation of nature, research he used for paintings creatively orchestrated in the studio.