This painting impressively illustrates Friedrich’s notion of a subjective, romantic experience of nature. A wanderer, very early on interpreted as a self-portrait of the artist, (1) has reached the grass-covered crest of a mountain that rises into the immediate foreground of the painting. The striking color of his clothing, the top hat lying on the ground, as well as the walking stick clearly identify him as a city dweller. Leaning against a rock, the man pauses in order to take in the low mountain landscape around him, which is shadowy and indistinct in the darkness of the night. He is, perhaps, reflecting on his smallness in the face of the overwhelming splendor of nature.

The figure’s gaze sweeps down from the fir tree-covered slopes into the valley, where the rising fog can be seen far below. On the opposite side, a conical mountain rises into the sky. Filling the center of the composition and towering above the horizon line, the two pictorial diagonals intersect at its summit. Friedrich based the appearance of the mountain and its surroundings on a study of the Rosenberg that he made on May 12, 1808, in Bohemian Switzerland. (2) It may be that he already had the later painterly rendering of the mountain and its associated exaggeration in mind, since he noted on the drawing that it “must be taller.“ (3)

At the moment depicted, the wanderer is witness to a rare atmospheric-visual natural phenomenon: a rainbow spans the dramatically clouded night sky over the entire width of the painting. Its presence further accentuates the symmetrical arrangement of the composition with its alignment to the central vertical axis. It could be a moon rainbow, which is much fainter than a rainbow caused by the sun. The silver shimmer of the moon, which sends out its soft light into the sky, can be seen on the left of the top of the rainbow’s arch. The lightened area in the direct foreground that illuminates the figure of the wanderer and his immediate surroundings is not very consistent with the lighting situation being portrayed. It appears as if it is the result of an imaginary source of light outside of the painting.

Friedrich’s painting was also received by feminist art, as demonstrated by the performance The Lonely Walker by Ulrike Rosenbach, first performed in 1979. The painting is present in a highly enlarged black-and-white reproduction on the floor. Within the scope of her performance, the artist walked along the length of the curved line of the rainbow, and in doing so made reference, among other things, to an Australian Aboriginal origin myth.

Markus Bertsch, in: exh. cat. Hamburg 2023, p. 134.

(1) See, among others, Einem 1938, p. 113; Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, pp. 308 f., no. 183.
(2) Grummt 2011, vol. 2, pp. 532–34, no. 564. Of the four studies, the second from the top resembles the painting most. It shows the view from the Large Winterberg to the Rosenberg. On the question of Friedrich’s standpoint and the topographic situation he depicted, see Hoch 1987b, p. 76.
(3) Grummt 2011, vol. 2, pp. 532 f.