This oil sketch and the Dresden picture are based on several pencil studies, made from life, some of which survive in an unpublished, incomplete sketchbook in a private collection, Karlsruhe. For the island closest to the riverbank, Friedrich adapted the undated drawing on page 37 of that sketchbook. The group of trees in the centre and the avenue of trees on the left are based on a drawing dated 20 May 1804. This avenue of trees once lined the banks of the Large Enclosure, located south of the river Elbe and slightly to the west of the mouth of the river Weisseritz, near Friedrich’s house on the outskirts of Dresden.

Unlike the Dresden painting, this oil sketch focuses on the landscape, excluding any of Friedrich's characteristic Romantic imagery. It belongs to a small group of paintings that are close in character to true plein-air studies despite being executed in the studio with the help of pencil drawings. Prof. Börsch-Supan notes three comparable oil sketches by Friedrich. Of these, a painting entitled Evening October, dated 1824 and formerly in the collection of Ernst Henke, Essen, is closest in style and handling of the brush. The present sketch most likely dates from the same period, circa 1824, and is notable for its Stupftechnik, or stipple technique. Their small size and sketch-like character make these paintings unique in Friedrich's oeuvre and suggest they were painted at a particular moment in his career. They were, in fact, made when Johan Christian Dahl lived in Friedrich’s house in Elbstrasse 33. This may explain why Friedrich, at least for a short period of time, was influenced by Dahl’s naturalistic approach and his new practice of plein-air painting.

Eight years later, in 1832, Friedrich returned to this oil sketch and developed it into the complex and highly finished painting in Dresden, transforming a simple study of landscape into a Romantic symbol of the transience of human life. Although not a plein-air sketch in the true sense, this work nonetheless comes closest in spirit to Dahl’s guidelines for plein-air painting and as such shows Friedrich at his most naturalistic.