“Two Men Contemplating the Moon,” by Casper David Friedrich is a German, oil on canvas from 1825 to 1830. The most prominent component of this painting is its diagonal landscape, where it seems an uprooted tree is falling not forward out of the picture and into our space compared to paintings of Romanticism’s predecessors, but backwards, almost into its own. This parallels the disengagement of the two male figures, in the middle ground, as they both do not interact with the viewer. Its a painting focusing on its own world. Its a painting that works to emphasize contemplation. Usually the act of contemplating focuses on a single aspect of life rather than many, where engaging an audience would force one to think about or show many other things in comparison. In fact, the era of Romanticism is in part characterized by imagination and emotion, and an appreciation of external nature which Friedrich portrays both as the two frozen, but relaxed figures look interestedly and diagonally at parts of the landscape.

Ramanpreet Chand