The figures themselves are dressed in dark colors and stiff, somewhat formal garments, which also serve to signify their higher class.

"[2] The paintings depicts a foreground scene of two people on a mountain path, which leads up from the centre bottom of the picture to the left.

The man on the left is somewhat higher on the path and is leaning on his companion's shoulder; he is slimmer and is wearing a grey-green frock-coat, from which a white collar protrudes, and the black cap of an early Burschenschaft, its ribbon tied under his chin.

[4] As in many paintings by Friedrich, there is no middle ground; the foreground earthly scene is contrasted with the lighted sky and the abyss at the two men's feet made perceptible through this contrast, which exemplifies the antithetical relationship of rational, palpable earthly space and irrational and sublime infinity explored by the Romantic painters.

This irregular and asymmetrical pictorial construction—one linked with the post-Baroque aesthetic of the previous century—was fairly rare in Friedrich's work, often characterized by regular geometric arrangements.

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.

[11] 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.

[12] The painting in the Galerie Neue Meister in Dresden was included in 1830 in Johan Christian Dahl's collection under the title Mondscheinlandschaft.

Zwei männliche Figuren betrachten den aufgehenden Halbmond (Moonlit Landscape: Two Male Figures Observing the Rising Half-Moon); he sold it to the Royal Art Gallery in Dresden in 1840 for 80 talers.