“Two Men Contemplating the Moon”
1.
Joy of Museums recently shared these two paintings by the 19th-century German Romantic landscape artist Caspar David Friedrich — an effort, no doubt, to remind us of the gentle, healing qualities of Nature in an increasingly frenetic, frantic world. Friedrich’s work is best known for its contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, stark trees and Gothic megalithic ruins. Through his painting, Friedrich sought to provoke a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. His paintings often feature a human figure in diminished perspective against an expansive landscape, reducing us to our true scale.
“Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon”
2.
The first painting, “Two Men Contemplating the Moon,” depicts two men on a mountain path, framed by an uprooted oak tree on their right, its roots reaching out to a spruce tree on their left. The jagged branches and stark contrast suggest threat, but the glow from the moonlit sky lifts the mood. Friedrich painted three versions of his scene. The playwright Samuel Beckett, standing before the second painting, “Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon,” later admitted that the painting was the creative inspiration behind his two-act play Waiting for Godot, in which two characters, Didi and Gogo, wait for someone named Godot who never arrives.