Daytime cycle: The Afternoon

Friedrich painted this small canvas around 1821 or 1822 as the afternoon in a set of four times of day. It was probably one of the two pictures he added later, after a morning and an evening had already been made as a pair. Its core is much older. The stand of tall pines and the horse and cart below them largely follow a pencil drawing from around 1798, when Friedrich had just settled in Dresden in his mid-twenties. More than 20 years on, he went back to that sheet and built an afternoon around it. What he added is the season. In the foreground the field is half harvested, with standing grain on the left and bare ground to the right, and a farmer drives his cart across the middle distance. Above them the sky is lighter on the left and darker on the right, as if the weather is turning across the canvas.