Caspar David Friedrich’s iconic painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog has for decades had a secure place in our collective visual memory, but it has acquired a new dimension in the present age of social media. (1) Contemporary artists have long since discovered the Wanderer and critically questioned, and offered adaptations to, the potential identity of the central figure. The particular effect of the painting is thanks to the suggestive power of its composition, and the most prominent Rückenfigur in Friedrich’s oeuvre plays a substantial role in that. (2) Though there have been increased attempts recently to solve the riddle of the anonymous wanderer’s identity, there are no reliable indications as to the identity of the person Friedrich may have been portraying.

As if with a magnifying glass, the painting examines an entire bundle of fundamental Romantic topoi. The experience of a peak, oneness with nature and the associated feelings of loneliness, and, finally, subjectively conditioned seeing, are all inscribed in the motif in a special way. All of these elements are embodied by the prominently placed, male Rückenfigur, the center of the work’s content and composition. (3) The central horizontal line is emphasized by the standing man, and the mountain flanks that descend toward the center from both sides are also oriented toward him. With such people, seen from behind, Friedrich found an especially expressive form for the theme of the subjective experience of nature.

The man, whose clothing identifies him as a city dweller who has set out into nature to experience it aesthetically, has reached the peak. He pauses to enjoy the prospect offered to him. A low mountain range unfolds before his eyes, with a rhythm set by striking mountains and accentuated by patches of fog. But we are not so much looking into this view as we are looking over the shoulders of a person located there. Friedrich thus makes vision the painting’s true theme. The few surviving preliminary drawings are for parts of the painting only. For example, the artist borrowed the rock pedestal on which the male figure stands like an unshakable statue from a drawing he had made while climbing the Kaiserkrone in Saxon Switzerland on June 3, 1813. (4) A vertical stroke on the left edge of the sheet, to which Friedrich added a note, (5) underscores the significance of his subjective visual experience in nature for the spatial orientation of the painting. In addition, for the conical mountain in the background on the left, which responds to the striking Zirkelstein on the right, he used a study he made of the Rosenberg in Bohemian Switzerland from May 1808. (6) Meanwhile, Friedrich based the rock formation in the middle ground on the left on his 1808 drawing of the Gamrig, east of Rathen, in Saxon Switzerland, slightly modifying its appearance for the painting. (7) In view of the prominence of this painting, it is almost tempting to say that the above does not amount to much. But this very discovery unites Wanderer above the Sea of Fog with other paintings by Friedrich for which only a modest number of studies have survived, if any at all.

Markus Bertsch, in: exh. cat. Hamburg 2023, p. 196.

(1) The literature on this painting is boundless. See, among others, Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, p. 349, no. 250; exh. cat. Hamburg 1974, pp. 218 f., no. 135; Rautmann 1979, pp. 79–85; Jensen 1995, pp. 201 f.; Koerner 1998, pp. 203–05; Busch 2003, pp. 98–101; exh. cat. Essen/Hamburg 2006, p. 374; Bohme 2006, pp. 52–56; exh. cat. Berlin 2018, pp. 136 f., no. 21; Foldenyi 2021; Richter 2021–22, pp. 154 f.; exh. cat. Schweinfurt/Winterthur 2023, p. 235, no. 52; Busch 2023, pp. 31 f.; Grave 2023, pp. 203–06; Hohmeyer 2023.
(2) On the significance of figures seen from behind in Friedrich, see, among others, Wolfradt 1924, pp. 42–62; exh. cat. Hamburg 1974, pp. 40–43; Prange 1989, pp. 286–91; Hofmann 1995, pp. 401–28; Rzucidlo 1998; Bohme 2006; Scholl 2007, pp. 166–69 and 317–23; Sugiyama 2007; Grave 2023, pp. 203–23. On this theme, see also the essay by the present author in this volume.
(3) Grave 2023, pp. 203–05.
(4) Grummt 2011, vol. 2, pp. 647 f., no. 680. See also Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, p. 349, under no. 250; Hoch 1996, p. 58; Richter 2021–22, p. 155.
(5) “at this height above the tallest peak of the stone is the / horizon.”
(6) Grummt 2011, vol. 2, pp. 532–34, no. 564.
(7) Ibid., pp. 542 f., no. 574.