The Monk by the Sea

1808–10

Oil on canvas, 110 × 171.5 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

One small figure stands on a pale strip of dune under an enormous sky. The Met's Alison Hokanson and Joanna Sheers Seidenstein (curator talk, 2025) note that it shocked viewers in 1810 and still looks ahead of its time.

Shown at the Berlin Academy in 1810. Heinrich von Kleist's newspaper response, adapted from Clemens Brentano, is the best-known reaction to it.
Look at the bands of land, sea and sky: there are no framing trees and no path leading into depth.
About two years of repeated overpainting stripped the composition down and set aside normal perspective.
Emptiness is the subject. With almost nothing to hold the eye, the viewer shares the monk's position before a space too large to measure or explain.
King Friedrich Wilhelm III bought it in 1810 at the request of his son, the crown prince.

Image: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Alte Nationalgalerie · Public Domain Mark 1.0