Moonrise over the Sea

Friedrich painted this in 1821, by then a married man in his mid-forties settled in Dresden, and he set it on the Baltic coast where he had grown up. Three young people in everyday clothes sit on a big rock with their backs to us, watching the moon come up over the water while two sailing ships drift slowly toward the shore. He liked figures seen from behind because it lets you look with them rather than at them. The light is doing something careful here, the cool moon low over a bank of cloud, the sea catching just a little of it. Nothing dramatic happens. The whole picture is three people at the end of a day, waiting for the boats to come in.