“After a long time I dared to paint again and was pleased that it started well, contrary to my expectations” (1) – Friedrich wrote on October 14, 1835, barely four months after what was probably his first stroke. His painting hand was to remain partially paralyzed, which did not stop him from painting, even though it became increasingly difficult to move his arm freely and precisely over the canvas for long periods as usual. This makes the painting Seashore in Moonlight, (2) with its unusually large format for Friedrich, all the more astonishing. As one of his last ever oil paintings, it was shown for the first time at the Dresden Academy exhibition in 1836 and purchased a year later by the Saxon Art Society (Sächsischer Kunstverein), which had become an important supporter of the artist’s in the financially-strained 1830s. (3)
The sea had always played a major role for Friedrich, who spent the first twenty-five years of his life on the coast. Even so, Seashore in Moonlight also unites other familiar Friedrich motifs: the rocky shore, as it also appears in the late sepias; intertwined anchors; smaller and larger boats, lying overturned on the beach, resting in shallow water, drifting further away, recognizable only by the moonlight reflected in the sea. Here is the exact center of the picture, where the vertical and horizontal axes (the latter also describing the horizon) meet, and with which everything seems to be aligned. At first glance, the scenery almost seems monotonous, so still is the night. However, recent art-technological studies prove how deliberately Friedrich dispensed with distractions here: infrared light reveals that he had first moored two other sailing ships on the open sea and placed the larger one in the middle. (4) As in his iconic Monk by the Sea (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie), pictorial elements evidently had to give way in order to reinforce the impression of a tranquil moonlit night.
The group of seascapes is undoubtedly in the tradition of marine painting, a special genre of landscape. Seascapes had their heyday in the seventeenth century in the Netherlands, where the sea could appear calm or seething, idyllic in rural surroundings or wild as the setting of naval battles or disasters. They could be used to express unlimited expanses and atmospheric moods—criteria that also apply to Friedrich’s maritime landscapes. He was probably able to study Dutch seascapes in the Königlich-Sächsischen Gemäldegalerie in Dresden, from painters such as Cornelis Leonardsz. Stooter, Pieter Mulier the Elder, and Simon de Vlieger. In contrast to their turbulent masses of water, Friedrich’s painting captivates with its reductive simplicity, which may also resonate with thoughts of his own transience.
Clara Blomeyer, in: exh. cat. Hamburg 2023, p. 332.
(1) Friedrich/Zschoche 2006, letter no. 132, pp. 221 f.
(2) Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, p. 458, no. 453.
(3) As its chairman, Carus recommended that the Sächsischer Kunstverein make the purchase and pay the asking price of 300 thalers in view of Friedrich’s “great [financial] distress.“ See Hoch 1985, p. 134.
(4) See the essay by Markus Bertsch and Eva Keochakian in: exh. cat. Hamburg 2023.