Two Men Contemplating the Moon

On a woodland path at dusk, two men stand with their backs to us, one resting a hand on the other’s shoulder, quietly gazing at a crescent moon and a single star. Beside them are a dead tree with exposed roots and a large boulder, all wrapped in dim, soft light. Caspar David Friedrich was the leading figure of German Romantic painting. He often showed figures from behind, so that viewers seem to stand with them before the vastness of nature, sharing in its mystery and sublimity. Friedrich painted several versions of this composition; this one dates from about 1825–30. For him the moon and nature carried thoughts of eternity and the beyond, and the act of gazing itself became an almost religious contemplation.