A man in a dark coat stands on a crag with his back to us, looking out over a sea of mist and distant peaks. It is so closely tied to the idea of Romanticism that it has become a stock image for solitude and awe, and a sign of how much of the painting is invented.
Caspar David Friedrich did not paint a real view. He made sketches of rocks and mountains in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, near his home in Dresden, and combined them in his studio into an imaginary landscape. The peaks in the distance, the cliffs in the foreground and the layers of mist were assembled to produce a feeling, and the feeling is the subject.
The figure is a Rückenfigur, a person seen from behind, a device Friedrich used again and again. Because we cannot see his face, we step into his place and look out with him. The man's identity has been the subject of guesses. One suggestion is a Saxon officer, and his dark coat resembles the plain dress that patriotic volunteers wore in the years after Napoleon's defeat, when Germans were looking for a national identity. It is a likely reading, though it cannot be proved.
The painting did not always have its famous title. The name Wanderer above the Sea of Fog was attached much later. Friedrich's reputation faded after his death in 1840 and came back in the twentieth century, and the Hamburger Kunsthalle bought the painting in 1970.
Today it appears on book covers and album sleeves, and in thousands of memes about getting through a hard week. A little irony fits it. The man is standing at the top of the mountain, and he is not looking down. He is looking out at what he cannot see.
Friedrich's Wanderer above the Sea of Fog appears on our:
- Caspar David Friedrich 'Wanderer above the Sea of Fog' Poster
- Wanderer above the Sea of Fog Shirt
- Wanderer above the Sea of Fog Tee
- Wanderer above the Sea of Fog Hoodie
- Wanderer above the Sea of Fog Mug
- Wanderer above the Sea of Fog Velveteen Plush Blanket
- Wanderer above the Sea of Fog Jigsaw Puzzle