Using the smallest format, Friedrich set himself the difficult task of combining a view of the landscape in the same picture plane as the banks of clouds obscuring it. At first glance, the painting (1) looks like a spontaneously captured oil sketch, but on closer inspection it turns out to be an extremely calculated, planned composition of enormous spatiality. Scree fields are visible immediately beyond the painting’s threshold. These are succeeded by a mountain meadow in which a small pond is embedded. Behind it, the terrain slopes downward and continues into the background over the mountain ridges jutting into the picture from the right. The horizon line can only be made out in the upper quarter of the painting. Traveling from one gap in the clouds to another, the eye can notionally wander over valleys and elevations to the most distant background. For the composition of the painting, Friedrich turned to a drawing he had made in the summer of 1811 on his trek through the Harz Mountains, which in all likelihood shows the view from the Brocken. (2) In this sheet, the artist has already defined its exact position by means of a continuous horizontal pencil line and the addition of the word “horizon.” (3)

In contrast to the approach taken in many of his other works, Friedrich does not appear to have aimed for the symbolic exaggeration of his subject. Rather, it seems as if he has primarily set himself the task of realizing the phenomenon of scudding clouds before a partially visible landscape space, which recedes far into the distance as convincingly as possible. The use of clouds as the main subject of the composition also introduces the factor of time into the process of reception. Despite the static medium of painting, we are able to imagine the dynamic, fleeting events in the sky; at the same time, in view of the visible brushstrokes, we realize that this is not the illusion of an experience of nature, but rather its translation into a work of art. (4)

Markus Bertsch, in: exh. cat. Hamburg 2023, p. 256

(1) Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, pp. 365 f., no. 276.
(2) Grummt 2011, vol. 2, pp. 632 f., no. 654. See also Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, pp. 365 f. Although there is no consensus among scholars that this is actually the view from the Brocken, Friedrich’s handwritten inscription (“Brocken den 29t Juni 1811”) suggests that this is the case. On the topographic situation, see Zschoche 2000, p. 63.
(3) Grummt 2011, vol. 2, p. 632. In Friedrich’s sketchbooks, the word “horizon” was used more regularly from 1807. On this and the meaning of these notations, see Busch 2003, p. 82.
(4) Grave 2022, pp. 52 f.