Friedrich: A Walk at Dusk

Caspar David Friedrich was a German landscape painter. His work shows allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against morning or night skies or Gothic ruins. A Walk at Dusk is an oli on canvas painting. In the painting 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 itself.