What Caspar David Friedrich can teach us about waiting

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

Caspar David Friedrich’s “Moonrise by the Sea” (1822) is one of those paintings that stay with you your whole life. It has all the requisite ingredients and then some: surreal beauty, haunting drama, virtuosic technique and enduring psychological power. And the setting, as we’d expect from this quintessential Romanticist painter, is truly sublime — a golden moon above a wine-dark sea. 

Seated on a rocky outcropping, overlooking the ocean, are two identically dressed women and, some distance away, a blue-capped man. I like to think the women are sisters, but Friedrich would rather we know less: he gives us only profils perdus, slivers of their faces. This absence of concrete identity invites us viewers to involve ourselves in the narrative.

So, let’s accept Friedrich’s invitation, step into the picture and orient ourselves. The upper half of his composition is dominated by sky, the lower half by sea and rocky shore. It’s a symphony of purples, browns and blues — a snapshot of Nature’s palette at its very best. The scudding clouds above, boats at center and boulders below each lead our eyes leftward until they harmoniously converge on the horizon. The way Friedrich impeccably structures this space, to me, embodies the unity and sublimity of the ocean itself — one boundless, continuous expanse of water, all-consuming and all-equalizing, terrifying and terrific and ineffably grand.

And let’s imagine ourselves sitting on the rocks as Friedrich’s figures do. The stone is rough and cold; the evening wind feels chilly and sentimental. The air is salty, marine. Waves crash onto water and water laps over sand in a hypnotizing cycle of tension and release, tension and release, noise and peace, noise and peace. This is sensory nirvana.

In the meantime, a deep purple dusk gives way to a warm, luminescent lunar embrace. Without the context of the painting’s commission, we might mistake this for a sunrise; instead, this is a radiant full moon ascending. It pokes its head through a rampart of clouds, carving out a clearing in the sky and basking distant waters in its orange-yellow glow. Its brilliance suffuses the seascape, animating it with new nocturnal life.

Before us on the ocean sit two silvery, nearly translucent boats. Whether they’re sailing seaward or shoreward is ambiguous, but in either case, the atmosphere feels heavy. Bittersweet.

Have we just bid farewell to friends or family who now sail off to the great beyond? Maybe they’re sailing off to better, happier lands, sailing toward the optimistic brightness of the moon. We feel the uncertainty and pain of letting go as one of Friedrich’s women puts her arm around the other, as if to assure her everything will be alright. We can only hope for the same.

Or are we eagerly awaiting the return of a loved one, watching their vessel as it approaches us and prepares to unload? The woman’s arm, then, could suggest relief and gratitude. The moon rises in the sky to share our joy and comfort in knowing that everything’s okay.

Or are we instead mere observers — onlookers contemplating the journeys of others and, in doing so, reflecting on our own? Perhaps we find catharsis in the power of crashing waves or inspiration in the courage of sailors heading out to sea. Perhaps we seek solace in the physical and spiritual greatness of the ocean and, by extension, the cosmos. We might let its omnipotence and magnificence wash away the trivialities of life to leave the perspective we need, the advice we crave. We let it consume us. We let it feed our soul.

The bottom line is that Friedrich, in all his ambiguity, allows us to see what we want to see. If we feel the jittery anticipation of reuniting with family after many days/months/years away, we can interpret his figures as feeling the same. If, rather, we feel the heart-rending dread of not knowing when we’ll see family again, his figures can likewise share our unease. So, too, if we feel directionless at large, and we’re waiting for a sign, for an answer, for some — any — anchorage. They become us; we become one.

And as we wait, we hope. We look for signs. For medieval kings waiting to make a diplomatic decision, it might be through astrology. For hopeful members of Stanford’s Class of 2029 waiting on their admission decision, it might be through the storied practice of portal astrology. For others still, it might be scrolling through text messages looking for what could’ve gone wrong; it might be replaying every response in an interview in search of answers we might never get.

In any and every case, Friedrich shows us in beautiful oils that amid the weight of the world and the intimidating, entirely overwhelming immensity of it all, a guiding beacon will reliably appear. He reminds us that an optimistic moon will rise, and that even if it doesn’t, he’s immortalized one for us in paint. He suggests that in the most tumultuous of days and most hopeless of nights, the moon, the sea and Nature herself will still accompany us and see us through our worst.

I think if he lived today, Friedrich would advise us in times of waiting to go to the sea. There, we should let its salty air and crashing waves cleanse our soul, purifying it until only introspection and clarity remain. Then, if we feel unsettled still, we can find solace — anytime from anywhere — in his conception of a breathtaking moonrise.

You can experience “Moonrise by the Sea” in real life in “Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature,” on view through May 11, 2025 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

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