Acantilados de creta en Rügen

Friedrich married in January 1818, and that summer he took his new wife to the Baltic island of Ruegen, where the coast drops away in these blinding white chalk cliffs. He painted the trip soon after. Three figures cling to the edge of a grassy overlook, a man on hands and knees peering straight down into the drop, a woman in red pointing, and a third who simply stares out at the sea. The man is usually taken to be Friedrich himself, the woman his wife Caroline. Look at how the chalk glows almost too bright between them, and how the two arms of the cliff frame a wedge of empty water and sky that runs to the horizon. Friedrich rarely let you see the ground safely under his figures. Here they are kneeling right at the brink, on a honeymoon, looking out at something with no edge to it.