Ruines de l'Oybin

In July 1810 Friedrich and his friend Kersting climbed the Oybin, a rocky height near Zittau on the Saxon border, and found the shell of an abandoned monastery on top. Friedrich drew the roofless chapel on the spot. He kept the sketches for 25 years, and only around 1835, an old man by then, worked them into this painting. It carries a second name, The Dreamer. A single small figure sits in an arched window of the ruin, half swallowed by the greenery that has crept over the broken stone, doing nothing but looking out. The Gothic tracery of the empty window survives almost whole while the walls around it crumble. Ferns and young trees grow straight out of the old masonry.