Monk by the Sea

1808-1810

Caspar David Friedrich

Nationalgallerie Berlin

Arguably Friedrich most famous canvas, “Monk by the Sea” underwent significant revisions and overlays of paint, thus contributing to its singularly abstract and radical final form.  Working on the canvas for two years, Friedrich here completely abandons the classical rules of perspective and formal organization governing landscape painting since the works of Poussin and Claude Lorrain in the seventeenth century.  Instead, the painting is archetypally divided into three horizontal layers of earth, water, and sky.  His head bared, a (Capucin) monk stands on the shore, surrounded by seagulls, the only other living beings aside from the forlorn human figure.  In front of the solitary walker, a leaden and almost black ocean extends immeasurably outward; grey clouds hovering above the water only yield to blue skies in the painting’s uppermost range.  Rarely if ever before has painting presented itself in such uncompromising terms.  The visual space resembles an abyss; there are no borders, no points of reference but, instead, only a state of suspension between day and night, doubt and hope, death and life.  The painting was first put on display in 1810 at the Academy Exhibit in Berlin, where King Frederick III. of Prussia acquired it.  On 13 October 1810, the German writer Heinrich von Kleist published a short insightful essay on the painting.

“Empfindungen vor Friedrichs Seelandschaft” in the main Berlin newspaper (Berliner Abendblätter) [reprt. in Kleist: Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, vol. 2, ed. Helmut Sembdner [Munich, 1993]).

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