The theme of death and transience is one of the key aspects of Friedrich’s art. As early as 1803–04, he created a large-format sepia drawing, which has not survived, dedicated to the symbolically-exaggerated imagination of his own burial. (1) Even in the decades that followed, graves remained an important motif. We encounter the aspect of death again in a strikingly condensed motif that recurs in Friedrich’s late work from the mid-1830s. A group of pictorial brush drawings have survived from this period that show nocturnal depictions of open graves in cemeteries. (2) On one of these sheets, an oversized owl sits on a coffin resting on wooden planks above the already excavated grave. (3) Two shovels – one thrust into the ground, the other lying nearby – refer to the work of the gravedigger; the rope, to the lowering of the coffin into the grave. The conspicuous presence of two large thistles in the foreground of the painting resonates with the theme presented and symbolizes the hardship of life on Earth, which comes to an end with death. For these plants, Friedrich drew on nature studies that had been made decades earlier. The special effect of the composition results from the owl – a traditional harbinger of death – which fixes us with its eyes as if we were the recipients of its gaze, and death was our destiny.

The background of the sheet shows an extensive coastal landscape, into which Friedrich has integrated the characteristically steep bank of Cape Arkona on Rügen, which he frequently depicted on the left-hand side. The difference in brightness between the area illuminated by the light of the full moon and the dark foreground is striking. The resulting two-zone representation can be read metaphorically: the inevitability of death is followed by the hope of eternal life.

Friedrich designed a comparable composition in a large-format pencil study, (4) which served him as a preparatory drawing for another depiction from this group of works. (5) Once again, we find ourselves in a cemetery and see the dominant motif, a coffin above a grave, ready to be laid to rest, together with the shovels placed before it and the thistles directly beyond the threshold of the image. The drawing is accentuated somewhat differently by the sketchily indicated objects hanging in the branches of the tree behind the grave. In addition to three wreaths, we see a cross and an anchor – both meaningful symbols that are frequently found in Friedrich’s imagery and can be read here as signs of salvation and hope. In the final composition, it is clear to see that these items are flower arrangements in a birch tree. (6)

Markus Bertsch, in: exh. cat. Hamburg 2023, p. 316.

(1) Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, pp. 278 f., no. 112.
(2) Grummt 2011, vol. 2, pp. 876–79, 884–87, and 888 f., nos. 970, 971, 977–80, and 982.
(3) Ibid., pp. 886 f., no. 980.
(4) Ibid., pp. 876 f., no. 970.
(5) Ibid., pp. 877–79, no. 971.
(6) Ibid., p. 878.