“It is a seascape. First comes a barren sandy beach, then the unsettled sea, and then the air. Along the beach walks a man in a black robe, deep in thought; seagulls hover around him, shrieking anxiously, as if to warn him not to venture into the tempestuous waters. – This was the description, and now come the thoughts: yet if you would also ponder from morning to evening, from evening to the fall of midnight, you would nevertheless not comprehend, not fathom, the mysterious otherworld!” (1) With these words, Caspar David Friedrich described his painting Monk by the Sea. (2) He worked on the painting for two years, making several changes and overpainting it, resulting in an unusual abstraction of the composition. With clear simplicity, the painting is divided horizontally into the three elements of land, sea, and sky. A bare-headed monk walks along the shore, seagulls fluttering around him. Besides the man, they are the only living creatures. The immeasurably vast sea lies in leaden blackness before the solitary monk; there is no boundary, no foothold. The gray veils of cloud above the water disperse unexpectedly to enable a view into the light sky blue further up.

At the urging of Friedrich Schleiermacher, the painting was presented at the Berlin Academy exhibition, along with its counterpart Abbey in the Oakwood, (3) where it was bought by King Wilhelm III. Friedrich’s painting was thus ennobled to the highest level. That same year, the Berlin Academy of the Arts appointed the Dresden-based painter as a member. Due to the radical reduction of its subject, Monk by the Sea elicited a wide range of responses and contributed to Friedrich’s early renown. In his article “Empfindungen vor Friedrichs Seelandschaft“ (Sentiments before Friedrich’s Seascape) in the October 13, 1810 issue of the Berliner Abendblätter, Heinrich von Kleist commented on the “wonderful painting” in which he saw his own thoughts and feelings reflected. (4) Prior to that, Kleist had asked Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim for a review of Monk by the Sea, on which he based his article. Both Brentano’s (5) remarks as well as the text by Kleist are among the most striking and profound reflections on Friedrich’s painting and his approach to landscape, which was unusually modern at the time. While Brentano addressed longing as the perpetual pursuit of the unattainable and the human relationship to infinity, Kleist spoke of its apocalyptic world view and the feeling of loneliness. His art of interpretation culminated in the famous metaphor of eyelids that have been cut off, which points to the dissolution of boundaries and forlornness and whose emotional force has no equal.

Birgit Verwiebe, in: exh. cat. Hamburg 2023, p. 132.

(1) Cited in Friedrich/Zschoche 2005, p. 64. The text by Friedrich probably comes from a lost letter to Johannes Schulze written in 1809 or 1810; see ibid., p. 66. Translation by Steven Lindberg.
(2) Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, pp. 302–04, no. 168.
(3) 1809–10, oil on canvas, 110.4 × 171 cm, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie; Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, pp. 304 f., no. 169.
(4) Kleist 1810.
(5) It was cowritten by Brentano and Arnim (Freies Deutsches Hochstift, Frankfurt am Main) and bore the title “Verschiedene Empfindungen vor Friedrichs Seelandschaft, worauf der Kapuziner, auf der diesjährigen Kunstausstellung,“ (Different sensations in front of Friedrich’s seascape with the Capuchin, at this year’s art exhibition). Kleist radically shortened, revised, and then printed the text, which was largely written by Brentano (supplemented with a concluding part by Arnim). See Schultz 2004.