Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich, 1818

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog is an oil painting composed in 1818 by the Caspar David Friedrich. It currently resides in the Kunsthalle Hamburg in Hamburg, Germany. It is a painting of a man standing on the cliff, gazing pointlessly to the wild nature. Below the cliff is the Sea of Fog covered up the forest below, making the painting looks more mysterious. The fading mountains in the far back of the painting also symbolized the undiscovered nature. The vanishing point of this painting is at the man in the middle, getting the attention to the man compare to nature.

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog was painted in Romantic style. Romanticism arose in the late 18th to mid-19th century. It “exalted individualism, subjectivism, irrationalism, imagination, emotions and nature - emotion over reason and senses over intellect.” (Wikipedia.org) The Romantic artists like to paint their moods, nature, etc. In Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, he painted his mood as loneliness, and painted the nature as he think of, mysterious.

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog depicted the human as small and useless compared to nature. He put nature in beautiful yet mysterious way. The fog that covers up the forest below it making us imagine what is behind that fog. In this painting, nature is powerful and strong compared to the little man in the middle, again, connecting to the theme, the connection between humans and the divines.