The Stages of Life

Description

The painting depicts a Baltic Sea port in the dusk. On the sea three sailing ships returning home can be seen; the large ship in the middle has already begun to draw in its sails. Two smaller sailboats have almost reached land. The one on the right heads directly for the group of five people on the bank, who by their clothes are recognizable as townspeople. In their midst sits a boy who holds up a Swedish pennant, while the girl beside him reaches for it. To their right sits a woman who leans toward both children with her right hand raised.

These five figures correspond to the five ships visible in the harbour beyond. The three groupings of figures (one aged man, two adults, and two children) echo the positioning of the ships at various distances from the shore as allegorical of the stages of life, and closeness to death. The central ship is thought to represent the mother, while further inshore, two small boats—references to the two children—have only just begun their voyage and still remain in shallow, clear water. To the horizon, the farthest ship disappears into the setting horizon, symbolizing the aged man's voyage from this life into the unknown.

Alternatively, other critics have interpreted the two ships in the distance as the mother and father sailing off to live their lives and gain experience and wisdom as parents, and the large ship closest to the shore as the old man - one who has lived a full life, built up many experiences and is finally pulling into the harbor at the end of life.

The group forms a semicircle: the children are on its farthest point; to their left and right are a younger man and the young woman. On the extreme left an older man stands looking straight ahead, outside the circle. The women and children are dressed for summer, while the old man wears a coat and a fur hat. The bow of the big ship in the middle is exactly aligned with the two children.

Swedish pennant

Friedrich's home town of Greifswald belonged to the Duchy of Pomerania until 1630, when the area passed to Sweden as Swedish Pomerania. In 1815 it became part of Prussian Province of Pomerania. The painting shows Friedrich's younger daughter Agnes Adelheid and his son Gustav Adolf holding a Swedish pennant 20 years after the cession of Greifswald to Prussia. The view encompasses the peninsula in front of the Baltic Sea, beyond which lies Sweden. Friedrich christened his son Gustav Adolf, after the Swedish king Gustav Adolf IV. The Swedish writer Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom wrote of the painter,

Friedrich is a Pomeranian … and considers himself half-Swedish"

Title

In keeping with the Romantic ideals of the time, Friedrich intended his paintings to function purely in visual terms, and thus he was cautious that the titles given to his work were not overly descriptive or evocative. It is likely that the relatively literal title The Stages of Life was not given by the artist himself, but that the work was instead renamed during a revival of interest in the artist in the late 19th or early 20th century.