Getty Museum
A Walk at Dusk
Creator
Caspar David FriedrichGerman Artist · 1774–1840
All works by this person →> God is everywhere, in the smallest grain of sand. > > --Caspar David Friedrich > > "[Caspar David] Friedrich [was] the sole landscape painter who...had the power to move every part of my soul, the one who created a new genre: the tragedy of landscape," wrote sculptor Pierre-Jean David d'Angers. Friedrich aimed to produce a Christian art based in nature, divested of standard biblical imagery. Aft
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 1830–1835
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Culture
- German
- Department
- Paintings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
His head bowed, a man walks alone in the silvery, cold moonlit night while contemplating a megalithic tomb and its implicit message of death. It is winter, and all around him nature is dying. Leafless trees loom behind like specters, but a grove of verdant oaks rises through the mist in the background with the promise of life. The waxing moon, high in the sky, also acts as a counterbalance to death, symbolizing Christ and the promise of rebirth for the artist Caspar David Friedrich. Friedrich was part of the German Romantic movement; his deeply personal and introspective vision addressed Christian themes through analogies based on the cycles of nature. *A Walk at Dusk* was among a small group of works Friedrich completed before he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1835. The painting embodies both the melancholy he experienced during this period and the consolation he found in the Christian faith.
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