Two Men Contemplating the Moon

c. 1825–30

Oil on canvas, 34.9 × 43.8 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

On a rocky path beside a gnarled tree, two companions face a crescent in the evening sky. This small canvas is the last of three versions of the composition.

The famous first version, of 1819, is a separate painting in Dresden; a second, of about 1824, is in Berlin.
Look at the sky: the Met's Sabine Rewald (New York Studio School talk, 2002) found it pinker than Berlin's, its paint the thinnest, and this version the closest to Dresden.
She adds that he repeated small pictures, but not large ones with difficult skies.
Rewald (Studio School) reads the composition as partly about friendship: in the Dresden first version the pair are Friedrich and his friend August Heinrich.
Given to the Dresden doctor Otto Friedrich Rosenberg in exchange for medical care. His descendants kept it until 1999; the Met bought it in 2000.

Image: The Met Open Access · CC0