The setting of this painting is clear: sunset at the end of the world. The message is also evident: no matter how hard, you have to hold on, just like this lonely tree on the edge of the cliff. Another interpretation of this Canvas Art compares the solitary tree with the couple standing near it. The contrast of being alone versus being together evokes feelings of compassion in the viewer. The figure of the black leafless tree appears so sad and lonely but the tree is still standing; it is still resisting the forces of wind.

This painting is contemplative in nature but stylistically it belongs to the expressionist modernist movement, which exaggerates the emotional effect. In expressionism, the artist attempts to depict the subjective feelings and associations that objects and events arouse in him, rather than objective reality. Expressionist artists seek intensity of expression and try to impose their own sensibility on the representation, substituting visual reality with their individual perceptions of it and their current state of mind. Austrian painters Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka, as well as Norwegian Edward Munch and German Otto Dix are four of the most renowned representatives of the expressionist art movement.