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Chalk Cliffs on Rügen
Caspar David Friedrich · Romanticism & Landscape
- Artist
- Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840)
- Date
- 1818
- Dimensions
- 90.5 x 71 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Kunst Museum Winterthur, Reinhart am Stadtgarten, Winterthur, Switzerland
This painting shows three figures on a grassy clifftop on the Baltic island of Rügen, looking down over jagged white chalk cliffs to a calm, blue-green sea. Two trees lean inwards from the sides, framing the view like a theatre curtain.
A closer look
Friedrich painted the work after his honeymoon in 1818, when he took his young wife Caroline to Rügen, and the three figures are often identified as the painter, his wife and his brother. The woman in red points down towards something; one man crawls on hand and knees to peer over the edge, his hat lying beside him; the other stands calmly gazing at the sea. The frame of trees and cliffs creates a heart-like opening onto the infinite, a typical Romantic contrast between the dizzying abyss and the vastness of the horizon, with two tiny sailing boats on the sea.
