Albertinum: Moonstruck – Two Hundred Years Two Men Contemplating the Moon

Zwei Männer in Rückenansicht, die in einer Naturlandschaft den Mond betrachten

Focus Albertinum: Moonstruck – Two Hundred Years Two Men Contemplating the Moon

Two Hundred Years Two Men Contemplating the Moon

One of the most famous paintings from the Albertinum’s collection will be two hundred years old in 2019: "Two Men Contemplating the Moon" by Caspar David Friedrich. On this occasion the museum brings together 15 of the most beautiful moonlight landscapes from its collection in one exhibition space. Among these are masterpieces like "View of Dresden at Full Moon" by Johan Christian Dahl and "Crossing at the Schreckenstein" by Ludwig Richter.

Exhibition Site Albertinum

DATES 26/06/2019—27/09/2020

The six paintings by Carl Gustav Carus in the exhibition prove him a passionate moonwatcher. Moonlight landscapes by Ernst Ferdinand Oehme and Christian Friedrich Gille demonstrate the centrality of this subject in Dresden during the romantic period.

“Two Men Contemplating the Moon” is a key work in the Caspar David Friedrich’s oeuvre. The moon appears as a vanishing point of dreamy oblivion, while the painting simultaneously turns against the conservative forces of the period.

The painter Peter Cornelius and the poet Carl Förster saw the landscape depicting the two wanderers when they visited Friedrich in his studio in April 1820. Friedrich ironically remarked that if people shifted to another world after death, he would certainly end up "on the moon" because he painted so much moonlight. Regarding the two men in their traditional German costume, he remarked: “they’re making demagogic machinations.” He was referring here to the liberal aspirations in Germany, which had been severely curtailed after the Carlsbad Resolutions in 1819.

**Carl Gustav Carus, Winterlandschaft mit verfallendem Tor, 1816/18** Albertinum

**Carl Gustav Carus, Mondnacht bei Rügen, wohl 1819** Öl auf Leinwand, 38,5 x 47,5 cm

**Carl Gustav Carus, Mondscheinlandschaft, 1859** Öl auf Pappe, 30,5 x 40,5 cm

**Georg Heinrich Crola, Gitarrespieler bei Mondschein, 1828** Albertinum

**Johan Christian Dahl, Dresden bei Vollmondschein, 1839** Albertinum

**Johan Christian Dahl, Kopie nach: Kopenhagener Hafen bei Mondschein, nach 1830** Albertinum

**Caspar David Friedrich, Abend am Ostseestrand, 1831** Albertinum

**Caspar David Friedrich, Schiffe im Hafen am Abend, um 1828** Albertinum

**Christian Friedrich Gille, Mondscheinstudie, 1831** Albertinum

**Ernst Ferdinand Oehme, Mondnacht auf dem Golf von Salerno, 1827** Öl auf Leinwand, 28,5 x 38 cm

**Ludwig Richter, Die Überfahrt am Schreckenstein, 1837** Albertinum

The yearning for the moon is one of the central motifs of romantic landscape painting. It is regarded as a tranquil yet distant friend, to whom one entrusts their innermost wishes in the loneliness of the night. One seeks a faithful companion in the moon, and yet it is constantly in flux—at times a narrow sickle and other times round and full. Its light bathes the world in a mysterious splendor, its pale and subdued light was particularly attractive to the painters of Romanticism.

What evenings did I not spend with my fantasies when fog over the Elbe dawned and the moon rose over the distant wooded hills, which dreams did not come to me, when I strolled over the entwined debris beneath the old linden trees at the Zwinger Palace and how peculiar did the Catholic church not often seem with its beautiful music and its mystical customs to my mind!

Carl Gustav Carus, Lebenserinnerungen, 1865