Küste von Helgoland,

Like the Alps, northern landscapes were first discovered as subjects by the poets and painters of Romanticism. Heinrich Heine devoted an entire cycle of poems, Die Nordsee (The North Sea, 1826), to the rugged north German coast. Christian Morgenstern came from Hamburg, but in 1830 moved to Munich and became a close associate of Carl Rottmann. This picture recalls the nocturnal coastal scenes painted by Caspar David Friedrich, Johan Christian Dahl and other Romantic artists in Dresden.