In this artwork, how is the Versions discussed?
According to Johan Christian Dahl, the first owner of the (presumed) earliest version, Friedrich painted an unknown number of copies, and others also copied the picture. Several versions are extant today, but their dating and authorship has not been positively determined; discussion of the question was revived in 1991. Apart from Dahl's copy (now in Dresden), there is a version in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, dated 1825–1830. In addition to the closer adherence to the golden section, the Dresden version is truer to Friedrich's preparatory sketches from nature.
Paintings of the variant image of a man and woman observing the Moon (Mann und Frau den Mond betrachtend), dated between 1818 and 1835, are located in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin and in a private collection in Switzerland. The art historian Kaspar Monrad suggests that this may be the first version of the theme, and thus would predate early 1818, when the Danish writer Peder Hjort reported obtaining such a painting from Friedrich. In addition to substituting the figure of a woman for the man on the left, the Berlin version differs from Two Men Contemplating the Moon in many details: the stump is broken rather than sawed, as it is in the Dresden version, the dead branch has been omitted, the tops of the trees on the right are higher, and decisively, the walking stick has been omitted, although X-ray examination reveals two lines indicating where the artist had planned to include it.
Two Men Contemplating the Moon golden section Johan Christian Dahl Alte Nationalgalerie Metropolitan Museum of Art X-ray