Wanderer above the Sea of Fog

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog

Artist	Caspar David Friedrich
Year	1818
Type	Oil-on-canvas
Dimensions	98.4 cm × 74.8 cm (37.3 in × 29.4 in)
Location	Kunsthalle Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (German: Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer; also known as Wanderer Above the Mist) is an oil painting composed in 1818 by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. It currently resides in the Kunsthalle Hamburg in Hamburg, Germany.

Description

In the foreground, a young man stands upon a rocky precipice, his back to the viewer. He is wrapped in a dark green overcoat, and grips a walking stick in his right hand.^[1] His hair caught in a wind, the wanderer gazes out on a landscape covered in a thick sea of fog. In the middle ground, several other ridges, perhaps not unlike the ones the wanderer himself stands upon, jut out from the mass.^[2] Through the wreaths of fog, forests of trees can be perceived atop these escarpments. In the far distance, faded mountains rise in the left, gently leveling off into lowland plains in the east. Beyond here, the pervading fog stretches out indefinitely, eventually commingling with the horizon and becoming indistinguishable from the cloud-filled sky.^[1]

The painting is composed of various elements from the mountains of the Elbsandsteingebirge in Saxony and Bohemia, sketched in the field but in accordance with his usual practice, rearranged by Friedrich himself in the studio for the painting. In the background to the right is the Zirkelstein. The mountain in the background to the left could be either the Rosenberg or the Kaltenberg. The group of rocks in front of it represent the Gamrig near Rathen. The rocks on which the traveller stands are a group on the Kaiserkrone.^[3]

Commentary

Chalk Cliffs on Rügen, Museum Oskar Reinhart am Stadtgarten, Winterthur, Switzerland. There are noted similarities between Wanderer and this painting.

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog is true to the Romantic style and Friedrich's style in particular,^[4] being similar to other works such as Chalk Cliffs on Rügen and The Sea of Ice. Gorra's (2004) analysis was that the message conveyed by the painting is one of Kantian self-reflection, expressed through the wanderer's gazings into the murkiness of the sea of fog.^[2] Dembo (2001) sympathised, asserting that Wanderer presents a metaphor for the unknown future.^[5] Gaddis (2004) felt that the impression the wanderer's position atop the precipice and before the twisted outlook leaves "is contradictory, suggesting at once mastery over a landscape and the insignificance of the individual within it."^[1]

Some meaning of this work is lost in the translation of its title. In German, the title is "Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer." Wanderer in German can mean either "wanderer" or "hiker."^[6]

In popular culture

• American black metal band Wolves in the Throne Room composed a song of the same name, which appears on their third album Black Cascade.

• Joe Walsh uses the painting for the back cover of his album The Confessor.

• In 2010 a compilation of neofolk and black metal music titled "Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer" was released as a tribute to the painting and artist.

• In 2008, Guy Davis, drew a version of the painting featuring Abe Sapien as the first page of issue four of the comic book mini series BPRD: The Warning.

• The painting is featured on the cover of White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century, published in 2011 by Jared Taylor.

• The painting can be found as a portrait model on the PC video game Minecraft.

• In his Open University Lecture Philip Pullman referenced this painting as an analogy for the experience of reading: the objective landscape (of the book) and his (the reader/wanderer's)subjective reaction to it.

• The painting is also the cover art of Barnes and Noble's printing of Thus Spake Zarathustra written by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Gaddis, John Lewis (2004). The Landscape of History. Oxford University Press US. pp. 1–2. ISBN 0195171578. 
2. ^ ^{a b} Gorra, Michael Edward (2004). The Bells in Their Silence. Princeton University Press. pp. xi-xii. ISBN 0691117659. 
3. ^ K.-L. Hoch: Caspar David Friedrich und die böhmischen Berge. Dresden 1987
4. ^ Gunderson, Jessica (2008). Romanticism. The Creative Company. p. 7. ISBN 1583416137. 
5. ^ Dembo, Ron S.; Andrew Freeman (2001). The Rules of Risk. John Wiley and Sons. p. 10. ISBN 0471401633. 
6. ^ Black, Joseph (2010), The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Age of Romanticism, Broadview Press, ISBN 9781551114040, http://books.google.com/books?id=13DyohVT8DkC&pg=PA386, retrieved 2011-10-02 

External links

• "Caspar David Friedrich - Wanderer Above the Mist". http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/his/CoreArt/art/rom_fri_wand.html. Retrieved 7 August 2007. 
• Sketches for the painting (German)