Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog
Wanderer Above The Sea
Of Fog (1818) - Oil on canvas
by Caspar David Friedrich
(1774-1840)
• Description:
The work depicts a man, Friedrich himself, standing atop a high mountain, before a great mass of fog. Peaks of other mountains can be seen above the surface of the fog, while a range of huge mountains can be seen in the background. The large expanse of sky above the heights of the mountains in the background covers much of the painting.
• Analysis 1:
This painting is very true to the romantic style and spirit. It depicts a man standing on top of a mountain, with his back to the painter, gazing down into a sea of fog. At first glimpse it looks like a mere landscape, but with a closer analysis we see that it makes a powerful statement about mankind and personal enlightenment. The audience should first notice the man's strange clothes. Although he is on top of a lofty mountain, he is wearing a formal outfit that would have been typical of a philosopher during Friedrich's life. He is looking down from his perch at a huge mass of grey fog. This is a symbol of the world and its general inhabitants. It is a powerful statement of the difficulty and loneliness of the intellectualy advanced. The man represents the few individuals in the world that are free from the shapeless mass that is society. This is typical of the romantic period. It was a time when the industrial revolution was in full stride and people tried to get away from machinery and the pain and poverty that they brought with them. It was popular to try to get away from the evil of society and back into the purity and majesty of nature. This is a powerful piece with depth and great detail. This piece can also represent mankind reaching for their goals and acknowledging their feats by standing above all things, representing their triumph over the struggles that life has to offer and in the end realizing that the struggle was worth it.
~ Source: Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog (Wikipedia)
• Analysis 2:
Friedrich's greatest accomplishment was his ability to turn landscapes into a medium of physiological and spiritual biography. Here, he includes his own portrait within his landscape as a lay figure seen from behind - a device intended to invite the viewer to look at the world through the lens of the artist's own personal perception.
It would not be an exaggeration to take this picture as the essense of the Romantic approach to art. Here, Friedrich has adapted the generic conventions of landscape painting to the demands of creative self-expression. Unwilling to have the artist serve as a mere "photographer" as it were of nature, Friedrich always took as his task the private and personal encounter of an individual with nature.
Indeed, Friedrich was captivated by the idea of encountering nature in solitude in deepest revines, on the edge of the sea, or as here on the pinncacle of a mountain, which was about as far away from urban civilization as a European man could get. Indeed in his later paintings, Friedrich will continue to stress that the very idea of "self-expression" had to be associated with physical and spiritual isolation. The Romantics believed that any artist who wanted to explore his own emotions, had necessarily to stand outside of the throng of money-making, political gimmickry, and urban noise in order to assert and maintain their positions.
~ Source: Caspar D. Friedrich - Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog
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