Cycle du jour : Le Matin

Friedrich painted this around 1821 as one of four canvases, a set that runs from morning through to night and also stands for the stages of a human life. Morning is the beginning: a single figure poling a small boat across a still, reed-fringed pond while mist lifts off the water and the first light reaches the trees. Like almost everything Friedrich made, it wasn't painted outdoors. He worked in his Dresden studio, building an ideal landscape from memory and mood rather than copying any real place. The boatman setting out at dawn is the youngest moment in the series. Dusk and night come later, each with its own failing light. For more than 100 years the four have hung together in Hanover.