Boats in the Harbour at Evening

By 1828 Caspar David Friedrich was no longer the coming man. The Romantic mood he had helped create was giving way to a plainer, more worldly taste, and in Dresden his reputation had begun its slow fade into the neglect of his final years. This is a hushed picture. Fishing boats ride at anchor in a harbour as the day goes out, their masts standing up as thin dark lines against a sky that still holds the last light. Friedrich rarely painted anything just for its own sake. A harbour at dusk, boats come to rest, carried for him a quiet thought of journeys ending. He kept the human figures small or absent, so what reaches you is mostly the stillness and the fading light.