Life stages

The Stages of Life is an allegorical oil painting by Caspar David Friedrich, dated 1835 in most accounts, though the catalogue entry gives 1834. It belongs to the last years of his career, when the painter was reflecting on his own mortality and on the brevity of life. Its theme is the journey from birth to death.

The scene unfolds on a shoreline with a harbour beyond. In the foreground, an old man with his back to us walks towards a group of two adults and two children gathered on a hilltop. The figures are echoed by ships in the harbour, each at a different distance from the land. Each vessel stands for a stage of existence, and together they present life as a voyage ending in death. Unlike many of Friedrich's works, this is not an invented landscape. It appears to be a Baltic coast near Greifswald, the painter's birthplace.

The figures are generally identified as members of his family. The old man is the artist himself, the children are probably his son Gustav Adolf and daughter Agnes Adelheid, and the older girl is his daughter Emma. The man in the top hat is most likely his nephew Johann Heinrich, who may have been expected to look after the family after Friedrich's death.

Political history helps explain some of the details. Greifswald was part of Swedish Pomerania until the Napoleonic Wars, after which it passed to the Prussian province of Pomerania. The two children hold a Swedish pennant, and the view looks out towards Sweden, a country Friedrich admired, as his choice of name for his son, Gustav Adolf, suggests. The painter, in his supposed self-portrait, wears German dress associated with the patriots of the Wars of Liberation.

The title may not be the artist's own. Following Romantic ideals, Friedrich avoided overly descriptive titles, so The Stages of Life was probably applied later, during the renewed interest in him in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. At its first exhibition, the work was simply called Landscape.

Painter

Caspar David Friedrich

Date

1834

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

72 × 94 cm

Museum

Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig

Movement

Romanticism

Genre

allegory

Depicts

ship, stone, sky

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