Morning (first version, "Small Morning")

1808

Oil on canvas, 109 × 85.5 cm. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg

Aurora, goddess of dawn, floats above a wide landscape inside an ornamental painted border. Of a planned four-part cycle on the times of day, it is the only part ever carried out in oil.

The cycle began as the painter's own print series, The Times of Day, issued in editions of 1805 and 1807.
Look at the frame: the arabesque border is painted as part of the picture and carries its own imagery.
This is the smaller first version; a larger second version of 1808–09, also in Hamburg, survives only in fragments.
The center carries a cosmic, nature-based meaning and the border a Christian one about the soul rising to God. The painter built this personal language of symbols to renew Christian art.
Given to the Kunsthalle in 1891 by Paul Runge.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (PD-Art)