In the painting "The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" (c. 1817) Caspar David Friedrich shows us a male figure in the middle of the picture. The hiker stands on a rocky peak with a view of a mountain landscape. He wears a dark green frock coat and dark green pants. His dark blond hair blows in the wind.

On his right side, the hiker relies on a mountain stick, a hiking stick for the mountains. On his other side, he has his left leg one step forward on the rising rock ledge to support himself there. As a result, the entire posture is balanced, safe and calm despite the dangerous situation.

In the middle and background of the painting we see a staggered mountain landscape, which is crossed by several fog banks. In the middle ground, there are some sandstone peaks behind rising fog, which are mainly overgrown with trees on the right side of the picture. In the staggered rear follows a sea of fog from the right and left each protrude a mountain formation. These two sloping surfaces, starting from the edges of the image, gradually taper towards the center, so that they almost point at the image surface like arrows on the wanderer's upper body.

In the background we can see on the left side of the painting behind another fog banks a high cone mountain. On the picture surface, this mountain, with its falling right contour line, hits the eye area of the hiker. On the right side you can see a smaller table mountain. He is probably the Zirkelstein, a rock formation in Saxon Switzerland. On the horizon follows the hint of further mountain lines, which merge with the blue-gray sky. Bright clouds in the sky at the top of the picture then pick up the motif of the nebula in its own way and close it off.

Caspar David Friedrich manages to create the impression of an almost infinite expanse through his multi-layered staggering of the various mountains and fog strips. The image space becomes unmeasurable and gets something supernatural. We see the boundless vastness of nature, as seen by the wanderer, as if we stand behind him, because he shows us his back. Thereby we see his seeing and his balanced and solemn attitude.

If we take a close look at the picture, we notice that the clothes of the hiker are nowhere scoured. The frock coat he wears is in fact no mountaineer clothing. It is more like a dress for church. Mountaineering therefore plays no important role in this painting, but the contemplation of the raised mountains. Caspar David Friedrich deliberately chooses the dignified clothing to express the solemn mood at the sight of the infinite nature.

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The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich. Available as an art print on canvas, photo paper, watercolor board, uncoated paper or Japanese paper.
male · rocks · romanticist · sublime · landscape · mountain · foam · mist · spray · waves · rocky · contemplative · alone · lonely · romantic · clouds · cloud · charles wilson · physicist · voyageur · brume · nuage · nuages · direction · power · Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany / Bridgeman Images