fairly rare in Friedrich's work, often characterized by regular geometric arrangements. Versions According to Johan Christian Dahl, the first owner of the (presumed) earliest version, Friedrich painted an unknown number of copies, and others also copied the picture. Several versions are extant today, but their dating and authorship has not been positively determined; discussion of the question was revived in 1991. Apart from Dahl's copy (now in Dresden), there is a version in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, dated 1825–1830. In addition to the closer adherence to the golden section, the Dresden version is truer to Friedrich's preparatory sketches from nature. Paintings of the variant image of a man and woman observing the moon (Mann und Frau den Mond betrachtend), dated between 1818 and 1835, are located in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin and in a private collection in Switzerland. The art historian Kaspar Monrad suggests that this may be the first version of the theme, and thus would predate early 1818, when the Danish writer Peder Hjort reported obtaining such a painting from Friedrich. In addition to substituting the figure of a woman for the man on the left, the Berlin version differs from Two Men Contemplating the Moon in many details: the stump is broken rather than sawed, as it is in the Dresden version, the dead branch has been omitted, the tops of the trees on the right are higher, and decisively, the walking stick has been omitted, although X-ray examination reveals two lines indicating where the artist had planned to include it. Provenance The painting in the Galerie Neue Meister in Dresden was included in 1830 in Johan Christian Dahl's collection under the title Mondscheinlandschaft. Zwei männliche Figuren betrachten den aufgehenden Halbmond (Moonlit Landscape: Two Male Figures Observing the Rising Half-Moon); he sold it to the Royal Art Gallery in Dresden in 1840 for 80 talers. Dahl had obtained the painting from Friedrich in exchange for a work of his own. The painting in Berlin of a man and a woman was at the Salomon art dealership in Dresden in 1922. In 1932 it was shown at the Paul Cassirer gallery in Berlin on loan from the collection of Lulu Böhler in Lucerne, and it was bought that year by the Alte Nationalgalerie from the Fritz Nathan Gallery of Lucerne. Interpretations With its softly melancholy mood, the painting epitomises the Romantic view of nature.