The Monk by the Sea
Caspar David Friedrich
Full disclosure: I follow and enjoy Art Every Day. George Bothemley has written on the subject of Caspar David Friedrich before. And, as it happened, he posted about this very painting while I was working on this essay. I highly recommend his substack and the entry on it, as his perspective is a little different from mine.
However, I will continue my present course.
Caspar David Friedrich was a complicated man born in a complicated time, during the sunset of the Age of Enlightenment, September 5, 1774 . The philosophy of Voltaire had born bitter fruit, and yielded to the chaos of the French Revolution and the subsequent rise of a tyrant. In such times, men oftentimes long for the transcendental experiences that materialism denies. He was such a man.
Although popular early in his career, associated with German Romanticism, by the end of his life, he was considered a relic of the past and died in poverty and near obscurity on May 7, 1847.
It wasn’t until 1906, nearly 60 years after his death, that the world rediscovered him, only to have his works marred by his association with Nazism. He suffered the unfortunate luck of being Hitler’s favorite painter.
It took another forty years after the end of WWII for him to be considered neither old-fashioned nor problematic.
He’s now recognized as one of the most influential painters of his day and a German cultural treasure. Many modern painters have been inspired by him.1 And no doubt, even the most ignorant would be familiar with at least one of his paintings, even if they do not know the name.
But who was Caspar David Friedrich? He was an introvert beset by depressive moods, which became more pronounced as he aged. This was probably exacerbated by the tragedies he experienced in his childhood, including witnessing a brother’s death by drowning. And I believe that this inclination to melancholy set the tone for many of his works, including the one I will feature today, The Monk by the Sea.
In the year 1810, he entered The Monk by the Sea, one of two paintings in a series, (the second of which was Abbey in the Oak Wood, which is featured in the post I linked) to the Prussian Academy of Arts exhibition of 1810. It was not well received. There was little to recommend it by the standards of the time. Some criticisms levied against it were that it was too stark, there was little in the way of visual clues to draw the eye, and that horizon line was too low.
I can’t say I disagree with them entirely. I don’t think this is a pretty picture, which is what the was audience looking for in a landscape. They wanted winding rivers that drew the eye, trees in the foreground, and perhaps a mountain. There is something too unsettling in its starkness. It’s hard to believe it was painted in the early nineteenth century.
The figure is a monk, who by his very nature, has renounced the world to live a life of quiet contemplation. The sea provides this backdrop, as the ocean often used as place for reflection. Then there is the coming storm, which the monk is powerless to stop. The coast is stark, white, and naked providing no shelter against it. This helplessness against the rising tide and the incoming storm is emphasized by the figure’s diminutive stature. He is lost in the midst of it; almost rendered invisible.
When Friedrich painted this, men still thought themselves the center of the world, even if it wasn’t in the literal Copernican sense. The west was very nearly at the zenith of its powers. Napoleon was forging an empire. Great changes in science and philosophy were upending the established order. And yet, this painting seems to echo David’s Psalm 8:
“What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him?"
Or in James 4:14: For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away.
If man is helpless before the might of nature, then he is helpless before the rising tides of time. Every pretense of control is illusory. Everything that one has can be taken a way, even kings and queens die, or lose their power.
Friedrich knew this intimately. The French Revolution was in living memory, their beloved Queen Louise had recently passed, and his home country was occupied by a megalomaniac foreigner, Napoleon.
Even Napoleon, the self-styled Emperor, would live to see his Empire dissolve and die alone and exiled.
His own life such a turn. From a celebrated Romanticist to a relic, he ended up a pauper. Such is the fickle nature of the arts, and he’s not the only one who suffered it. Rembrandt, Botticelli, and Vivaldi all died in poverty after youthful acclaim.
And the monk, as some have noted2, looks a lot like the painter himself. Could it be that he was anticipating his own struggles? Perhaps. This painting’s contemplative pessimism would suggest it.
I can understand Friedrich. I can understand why he would shun society as he aged. I can understand the anxiety in this painting and its sister. In my natural state, I’m a bit of cranky, loner Puddleglum myself. In my view, the world is filled with half empty glasses.
It’s been two hundred years and the world doesn’t seem any more stable than it was then. Wars still happen, leaders are still self-serving, kings are powerless, poverty still nips at the heels, and people are more interested in their own narcissistic pursuits than knowledge.
Yes, we are powerless against the storms of life.
But there is a God who walked on water and calmed the storms. There is a reality beyond which we can see. It’s just up to us to remember.
Suppose... suppose we have only dreamed and made up these things like sun, sky, stars, and moon, and Aslan himself. In that case, it seems to me that the made-up things are a good deal better than the real ones. And if this black pits of a kingdom is the best you can make, then it's a poor world. And we four can make a dream world to lick your real one hollow. -Puddleglum, C.S.Lewis, The Silver Chair
Dali’s Girl by the Window, 1925 vs. Woman at the Window, by Friedrich, 1822.
Art Historian, Albert Boime.