Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich

The figure seen from behind

A man in a dark green frock coat stands on the highest rock, walking stick in hand, his hair lifted by the wind. He is seen only from behind — a device Friedrich used again and again, known in German as the Rückenfigur — so the view is looked at through him rather than at his face. Below and beyond, fog fills the valleys, and crags and pine-topped outcrops rise out of it in paler and paler greys, until a single mountain stands up on the left under a streaked, grey-violet sky.

A made-up view of real places

The scene is not one view. Friedrich put it together in the studio from drawings made in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains of Saxony, south-east of Dresden, where he lived, setting separate rocks and summits where he wanted them. The figure is placed dead centre, and the slopes of the land lead in towards him from both sides. The picture has since become the image most often used to stand for German Romantic painting.

Where it hangs

It belongs to the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg and measures 94.8 by 74.8 centimetres.

About this print

Made from a 6,742-pixel photograph of the original, enough to print sharply at up to about 44 inches on its longest side.

Sources: Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg · Wikidata Q311243 · Wikimedia Commons