Greifswald au clair de lune

The little town glowing on the far shore is Greifswald, on the Baltic coast, where Friedrich was born and which he came back to paint again and again. He made this around 1817 in his Dresden studio, from memory rather than out on the water, which is why the silhouette of the church towers is not quite geographically right. He was after a mood, not a map. His contemporaries read the distant, half-dreamed town as an image of longing for a home just out of reach. In the foreground, closer and sharper, fishing nets hang to dry on tall poles and two small boats sit motionless on the dark water, while the medieval spires float in a soft haze of moonlight.