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Here, Friedrich depicts a motif that really does exist – a rainbow in the night sky. In principle, a night-time rainbow requires the same conditions as in the daytime, except the moon is the light source rather than the sun.

But night-time rainbows are rather rare, and Friedrich may never have actually seen one in nature himself. Instead, his inspiration for this work came from Dresden’s Paintings Gallery, or more precisely, Jacob van Ruisdael’s Jewish Cemetery, the painting further to the left. In Ruisdael, the rainbow is so discreet on the left-hand edge you might almost overlook it. Friedrich, though, puts his rainbow right at the heart of his composition. For both painters, rather than just being an interesting natural phenomenon, the rainbow was, above all, a Christian symbol. In Genesis, it appears after the Flood as a sign of reconciliation between God and humankind.

In Friedrich’s painting, the sole figure is set conspicuously alone in the foreground. And although surrounded by nature, he is dressed more for the city than a night-time hike – with a smart bright-red jacket, gleaming white trousers, and a top hat lying next to him in the grass. Through Friedrich’s sketchbooks, we know he also borrowed this figure from a Dutch baroque painting in the Dresden collection.

So here he takes his inspiration from various contexts – yet still successfully merges the diverse elements to produce an overall impression not just unified, but also new. Ultimately, then, he creates something completely his own, a Caspar David Friedrich which could not be more characteristic of his work.