The Lonely Tree

The Lonely Tree
German: Der einsame Baum
Artist	Caspar David Friedrich
Year	1822
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	55 cm × 71 cm (22 in × 28 in)
Location	Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

The Lonely Tree (German: Der einsame Baum, sometimes translated as "The Solitary Tree") is an 1822 oil-on-canvas painting by German painter Caspar David Friedrich. It measures 55 × 71 centimetres (22 × 28 in). The work depicts a panoramic view of a romantic landscape of plains with mountains in the background. A solitary oak tree dominates the foreground.

An ancient oak stands at the centre of the painting, clearly damaged but still standing. The tree's branches, dark in silhouette, project into the largely overcast morning sky. Banks of cloud seem to form a dome above the tree. The crown of the tree is dead, and the top of its trunk and two truncated branches resemble a cross. A shepherd shelters under the leaf-bearing lower branches. His flock of sheep graze beside a pond in the wide grassy meadow around the tree. In the middle distance, villages and a town nestle among other trees and bushes. Tree-clad hills pile up into blue-grey mountains in the background.

The work was commissioned by banker and art collector

Art historian

The painting has drawn a number of interpretations. Ludwig Justi sees the old oak as a symbol of the German people, rooted in the landscape; Jens Christian Jensen sees it as a link between the past and the present; and Charlotte Margarethe de Prybram-Gladona sees it as a symbol of loneliness.

• 
  Caspar David Friedrich,

  Moonrise over the Sea

  (Mondaufgang am Meer), 1822, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin
• 
  Caspar David Friedrich, Morgen im Riesengebirge, 1810–11
• 
  Photograph of the landscape in the Riesengebirge, including a view of

  Jeschken

• List of works by Caspar David Friedrich

• Der einsame Baum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
• Caspar David Friedrich: Moonwatchers, p. 38-39
• Caspar David Friedrich, Solitary Tree (Village Landscape in Morning Light) (1822), German History in Documents and Images

• Media related to Der einsame Baum by Caspar David Friedrich at Wikimedia Commons