| The
German Romantics were concerned with trying to find new ways
of experiencing and expressing landscape. They were obsessed
with haunting landscapes and intensely radiating skies. Friedrich
often represented the melancholy and desolateness of nature
in his works. One of his most famous motifs was the depiction
of two figures seen from behind whilst gazing at the moon in
shared contemplation. Friedrich painted three different versions
of this theme. The first version of the painting was Two
Men Contemplating the Moon (1819), the second version,
Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon (ca. 1824), and
the third and supposed last version of the painting, Two
Men Contemplating the Moon (ca. 1830).
Friedrich's
fascination with the moon inspired artists, writers and poets
of the time. The moon was associated with magic, the semi-conscious
and dreams and its symbolic meaning developed from “yearning
and despair to serene contemplation to final demystification
with the advent of rational, scientific inquiry”. It was
later known as a “phenomenon of the Divine”.
Friedrich's
landscapes often create a sense of mystery through the use of
the moon, dawn and dusk, which were frequent in his night-time
scenes. To quote the German philosopher Arthur
Schopenhauer (1788–1860), "Why has looking at
the moon become so beneficiary, so soothing and so sublime?
Because the moon remains purely an object for contemplation,
not of the will. Furthermore, the moon is sublime, and moves
us sublimely because it stays aloof from all our earthly activities…" |
Two
Men Contemplating the Moon: First Version
One of the most often illustrated and cited pictures, and the
best known of the three
paintings. It is also the most dramatic. According to Dahl (Friedrich’s
friend and neighbour) the two figures are two of Friedrich’s
pupils – August Heinrich and his brother is law Christian
Wilhelm Brommer. However Wilhelm Wegener claims that the figure
on the right is in fact Friedrich himself and the one on the
left is his student August Heinrich. The composition is asymmetrical
and the landscape relatively is crowded. The two figures in
all three versions of the painting are looking out from a stony
path (symbol of the path of life) at the moon (symbol of Christ).
Other symbolic elements include the dead oak tree, an evergreen
and a rock. Interpretations of this work vary from purely Christian,
to pagan, mystical, and political. |
The
light of early dusk in this painting contrasts with the dark
foreground and the luminous sky. The dead tree with its spiky
branches and menacing exposed roots dominates the picture, while
the couple fade into the background in dreamy awe at the moon.
In this version the woman has been substituted for the younger
man in the previous version. This is perhaps because of August
Heinrich’s death in 1822 which meant he replaced him with
a woman who is presumably his wife Caroline. 
