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The Sea of Ice
Caspar David Friedrich · Romanticism & Landscape
- Artist
- Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840)
- Date
- 1823–1824
- Dimensions
- 96.7 x 126.9 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany
The Sea of Ice shows a towering heap of shattered ice slabs piled up like a broken monument in a frozen polar sea. Half hidden on the right lies the crushed stern of a ship, trapped and destroyed by the ice.
A closer look
The jagged slabs rise in a pyramid towards a cold, pale blue sky, their sharp edges painted with crystalline precision. The ship is almost lost among them, a tiny sign of human ambition defeated by nature. Friedrich had studied ice floes on the Elbe in the harsh winter of 1820–1821, and was inspired by reports of Arctic expeditions. The painting has also been read politically, as an image of hopes frozen in the repressive Germany of the time. It did not sell during Friedrich's lifetime.
History of the painting
The painting found no buyer in Friedrich’s lifetime. After his death in 1840 it passed to his friend, the Norwegian painter Johan Christian Dahl, and it remained with Dahl’s family until 1905, when Alfred Lichtwark, director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle and a champion of the then almost forgotten Friedrich, acquired it for the museum.
