''Moonrise by the Sea'' or ''Moonrise over the Sea'' (German: ''Mondaufgang am Meer'') is an 1822
oil-on-canvas
Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments combined with a drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel, or copper for several centuries. ...
painting by German painter
Caspar David Friedrich
Caspar David Friedrich (; 5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a German Romanticism, German Romantic Landscape painting, landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation, whose often symbolic, and anti ...
. The work depicts a
romantic seascape.
Three young people, two women side by side and a man further back, are sitting on a large boulder by the sea, silhouetted against the sky as they watch the moon rising to the east above a band of clouds. In the distance are two sailing vessels, ghosting on a light breeze towards the spectators on the shore. The painting is probably a view of the
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North European Plain, North and Central European Plain regions. It is the ...
, near Friedrich's birthplace in
Swedish Pomerania
Swedish Pomerania (; ) was a dominions of Sweden, dominion under the Sweden, Swedish Crown from 1630 to 1815 on what is now the Baltic Sea, Baltic coast of Germany and Poland. Following the Polish-Swedish War, Polish War and the Thirty Years' War ...
. It may be based on the beach at
Stubbenkammer
The Jasmund National Park (German: ''Nationalpark Jasmund'') is a nature reserve on the Jasmund peninsula, in the northeast of Rügen island in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It is famous for containing the largest Rügen chalk cliffs in German ...
near
Rügen
Rügen (; Rani: ''Rȯjana'', ''Rāna''; , ) is Germany's largest island. It is located off the Pomeranian coast in the Baltic Sea and belongs to the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
The "gateway" to Rügen island is the Hanseatic ci ...
.
The work was commissioned by banker and art collector
Joachim Heinrich Wilhelm Wagener
Joachim Heinrich Wilhelm Wagener (16 July 1782 in Berlin – 18 January 1861 in Berlin) was a German banker and patron of the arts. His collection formed the initial nucleus of the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.
Life and work