The tree's branches, dark in silhouette, project into the largely overcast morning sky.

The crown of the tree is dead, and the top of its trunk and two truncated branches resemble a cross.

The work was commissioned by banker and art collector Joachim Heinrich Wilhelm Wagener, together with a second painting Moonrise by the Sea (Mondaufgang am Meer) to create a pair of "times of the day", depicting morning and evening landscape scenes, in a tradition of Claude Lorrain.

It was completed before November 1822 and has been held by the Berlin National Gallery since 1861, donated by Wagener as part of its founding collection.

Art historian Helmut Börsch-Supan has suggested that the mountains are in the Riesengebirge, now in the Czech Republic, which historically divided Silesia and Bohemia, southeast of Dresden, where Friedrich settled in 1798.