O mercado de Greifswald

Friedrich is remembered for solitary figures on cliffs and moonlit ruins, so it is a small surprise to find him drawing an ordinary market square. This is Greifswald, on the Baltic, the town where he was born and grew up. He rendered the old town hall and the gabled houses around the square almost exactly as they stood, and among the people crossing it he placed three of his own brothers with their families. He made this around 1818, the year he married and, in his mid-forties, finally had a settled domestic life of his own. The scene has none of his usual vast emptiness. It is simply the place he came from, set down with the same close attention he gave to his lonelier views.