The Evening Star, ca. 1830. Caspar David Friedrich. Oil on canvas. Freies Deutsches Hochstift, Frankfurter Goethe Museum, Frankfurt am Main.
Structuring his compositions around broad swaths of land, water, and sky—crisply rendered but reduced in detail—Friedrich imbued his late canvases, among them The Evening Star, with striking visual rhythms. In this period, Friedrich set his creative philosophy on paper, writing: “The task of a work of art is to recognize the spirit of nature and, with one’s whole heart and intention, to saturate oneself with it and absorb it and give it back again in the form of a picture.”