Caspar David Friedrich: Moonlight and Ruins
Moonlit coasts, figures watching the sky and ruined churches in bare woods are central to Caspar David Friedrich's art.
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About the series
Caspar David Friedrich was the leading landscape painter of German Romanticism. He lived in Dresden and returned often to a small set of motifs: the moon, the sea at dusk, and ruined Gothic churches and abbeys. These were subjects for reflection on faith, death and nature rather than views of real places.
Two Men Contemplating the Moon, painted in 1819 and 1820, shows two figures seen from behind under a crescent moon. It is in the Galerie Neue Meister in Dresden, and a later version is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon is in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin. The ruins include The Abbey in the Oakwood, of 1809 and 1810, also in the Alte Nationalgalerie, and several paintings of the abbey ruin at Eldena near his home town of Greifswald.
The moonlit scenes are small, calm pictures that suit a study or bedroom. Hang a ruin and a moonlit coast together for a quiet Romantic pair.
