O Mar de Gelo

In the winter of 1820 and 1821 Friedrich went down to the frozen Elbe near Dresden and made oil studies of the ice as it broke up and shoved itself into ridges. He was also reading the published accounts of William Edward Parry, the British officer who had sailed north in 1819 looking for the Northwest Passage. Both of those things are in this picture. The ship crushed under the slabs is a real type, wrecked not by a storm but by the slow, patient force of ice closing in. The painting had a second title in Friedrich's circle, The Wreck of Hope, and it barely sold in his lifetime. Notice that there is almost no open water and no horizon to steer toward. The stern of the hull juts up on the right, already half swallowed by the pile.