Why do Friedrich's people always turn their backs to us?

Dusk by the sea. The sky is lilac and pale gold. On a dark, rounded rock by the shore, two women and a man sit close together, looking out to sea, where two ships glide home and the moon is just rising.

None of them turns round. We never see their faces.

Caspar David Friedrich, Moonrise by the Sea, 1822. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

The figure from behind

Friedrich painted people from behind again and again: a lone man on a mountain top above the mist, a woman at an open window, a monk standing before the sea. Art historians even have a German word for it, Rückenfigur, the figure seen from the back.

It's a simple trick, and a powerful one. Because we can't see their faces, we stop looking at them and start looking with them. Their view becomes ours. We sit down on the rock too.

A painter of waiting

For Friedrich, nature was full of spiritual meaning, and moonlight especially. Some see in the returning ships a symbol of the end of a journey, of coming home. Others simply see three people sharing a moment of silence, in no hurry for the moon to be fully up.

That's the mood of the painting: not action, but expectation. The pleasure of waiting for something beautiful to arrive.

A moonrise practice for winter evenings

1. Find out when the moon rises tonight. In winter, it's often early in the evening.
2. Go to a window, a balcony or a street with an open view of the east.
3. Stand or sit with your back to the room, like Friedrich's figures. Let everything behind you fall away.
4. Watch the sky change colour while you wait. Notice the first light on the horizon.
5. When the moon appears, don't reach for anything. Just watch it rise, until it's fully up.

For more winter rituals, try a winter walk for the shortest days, or these five paintings that look exactly like winter.

Something to watch for

"(letters) On Art" brings each issue of "(meditating) On Art", with stories and slow-looking practices like this one, and a letter every month for long winter evenings.

Remember to take as much time as you need, and meet me at the next one.

Love, Evi