Paesaggio montano con arcobaleno

Friedrich painted this around 1809, just after a long walking trip through the German uplands and along the Baltic shore, and he brought the mood of those hikes into the studio rather than any single view. A lone traveller has stopped on a dark slope, leaning back against a rock, while a rainbow arches over the valley below in strange, low light. The scene does not quite add up as real weather. A rainbow needs the sun behind you, yet the land lies in deep shadow and the moon seems to be the light source, so the arc reads less as something observed than something felt. Friedrich almost never gives his wanderers a face; this one has his back to us so that we look out at the mountains through him. The picture hangs now in Essen, in the Folkwang museum.