Two Men Contemplating the Moon

After his marriage in 1818 people assume a more prominent role in Friedrich’s pictures and become considerably larger. Figures also appear more frequently in pairs closely bound by friendship or love, etching themselves forever on the memory in images of supreme potency. One of the most beautiful examples of such paintings of two figures is Two Men Contemplating the Moon.

In this ethereal painting, human and natural symbolism are subtly interwoven. The moon, an old Christian sign of hope, gleams from behind a withered tree, watched by two men, perhaps the artist and a pupil, in the ‘old German’ costume favoured by the resistance movement during the years of Napoleonic occupation. Painted after this threat had lifted, the picture links past, present and future through the cycles of time and season and the intercession of their human observers.

In response to demand from his clientele, Friedrich executed several copies of this composition, a number of which remain in private collection. He took up the motif again, in slightly varied form, in the painting Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon (c. 1824, Nationalgalerie, Berlin), in which he has perhaps portrayed himself and his wife in this scene of Romantic wonderment.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 6 minutes):

Franz Schubert: An den Mond (To the Moon) (Goethe) D 296