Vue d'un port

Friedrich came from Greifswald, a harbour town on the Baltic that had spent generations under the Swedish crown. In January 1814, by the Treaty of Kiel, his home region of Pomerania was handed from Sweden to Denmark, one of the small rearrangements of Europe as Napoleon fell. This harbour view seems to hold that moment. In the foreground a little boat under a Danish flag rows out toward the anchored ships, several of which still fly Swedish colours, as if the small new power were coming to take possession of the old. Friedrich did not paint a real, identifiable port. He built one from memories of Greifswald, the masts standing bare and vertical against a wide, pale evening sky.