The North Sea in Moonlight by Friedrich in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2025

Title: The North Sea in Moonlight

Artist: Caspar David Friedrich

Date: 1823–24

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 8 11/16 × 12 in. (22 × 30.5 cm)

Framed: 16 9/16 × 19 7/8 in. (42 × 50.5 cm)

Credit Line: National Gallery, Prague (O 8669)

Object No.: CDF.066

In 1824 Friedrich exhibited this work in Prague, in what is today Czechia (the Czech Republic). The catalogue identified the setting as the North Sea, which extends from Germany’s northwestern coast past the southern tip of Norway. Friedrich never visited the North Sea. Instead, he based his depiction on works by the Norwegian-born painter Johan Christian Dahl and Dahl’s source material, drawings of Norway’s coast by the Dresden geologist Carl Friedrich Naumann. Friedrich’s flair for subtly stimulating the imagination is evident in the path of light that unfurls from the boat’s mast toward the rocks and out to the open sea.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/caspar-david-friedrich-the-soul-of-nature/exhibition-objects