Moonrise over the sea (painting by Friedrich, 1821)

“Moonrise over the Sea” is a painting by German romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum .

Caspar David Friedrich

Moonrise over the sea . 1821

him. Mondaufgang am Meer

Canvas, oil. 135 × 170 cm

State Hermitage Museum , St. Petersburg

( inv. GE-6396 )

The picture is an image of two pairs of people watching the moon rise on the seashore, a female couple is depicted sitting on a stone separately from men who have gone far away from the stones to the water. Two small sailing vessels are visible in the background, in the foreground on the left are two large anchors.

The painting was painted in 1821-1822. In the summer of 1821, V. A. Zhukovsky , traveling in Europe, visited Frederick in Dresden and wrote to Grand Duchess Alexandra Fedorovna (wife of the future Emperor Nicholas I ) on June 23:

“I found several started paintings with him - one of them, true, would be nice to have; it can complement the one you already have: a moonlit night, the sky was stormy, but the storm passed, and all the clouds ran to a distant horizon, leaving the sky completely clear; the moon stands above the clouds, and their edges are illuminated by its splendor; the sea is quiet; the low coast is strewn with stones; anchor on the shore; far away on the very edge of the sea you can see the sail of a ship running to the shore (those returning to their homeland, those in your picture leave it) - they are waiting for him! Two young women sit on the rocks and look at the distant sail with calm hope; two men, more impatient in their hope, jumped over the first stones and stood a few steps closer to the ship, in the middle of the water and also looked into the distance ... She is twice your size; I asked about the price - a hundred chervonets ” ^[1] .

Mentioned in the letter “your picture” is probably another work of Frederick - “ On a sailboat ”.

"Two men by the sea." Paper, pencil, sepia, the Pushkin Museum to them. Pushkin .

In 1818, while traveling, Friedrich made a large number of drawings of stones, sailboats, anchors in a special album; later Friedrich used drawings in his work on the painting; This album is kept at the National Gallery in Oslo . Work on the painting was completed by the fall of 1821, when it was shown to the public at the academic exhibition in Dresden , in 1824 it was exhibited in Prague . It is not known how the painting ended up in Russia, but already in 1838 it was in the Cottage in Alexandria (Peterhof) , and according to the palace inventory of 1856, the work was stored in the Ropshinsky Palace and was located in the living room of Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich , from where it was transferred in 1926 to the State Hermitage Museum ^[2] . It was exhibited in the Winter Palace, since the end of 2014 it has been exhibited in the General Staff building in hall 352 ^[3] .

The Pushkin Museum in Moscow stores a sepia drawing “Two Men on the Seashore” by Friedrich, dating from about 1830-1835, which depicts two male figures on the seashore, almost completely identical to the picture (paper, pencil, sepia, 23.4 × 35.1 cm, inventory number R-7268) ^[4] .