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Friedrich made this small evening scene late in his life, in the 1830s, and by then he was a painter the world had largely moved past. The taste for his solemn, spiritual landscapes had faded, younger artists found them old-fashioned, and a stroke in 1835 had badly weakened his ability to work in oils. Against that, the picture is very quiet. Two men in old-fashioned German dress stand with their backs to us, looking out at the sea as the sun goes down. That trick of the turned figure was Friedrich's signature. You do not watch the men, you stand where they stand and share the view. The two look almost like the same person twice, and the painting is sometimes simply called Brothers. It later travelled to Russia and now hangs in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg.