Every single work by the great German romantic artist, Casper David Friedrich, was based
around a complex idea, which he articulated very simply. "A picture must not be invented", he said,
"It must be felt". This is his Masterpiece "Wanderer above the Sea of fog". At first glance it seems to be a
landscape painting, but it's not really. Despite the fact that most of the canvas is taken up by the
spectacular scenery, the painting is in portrait orientation, and everything is designed to draw
the view towards the man with his back to us - and yet it's not not a portrait either. As with all the
great German Romantics, Friedrich, was interested in exploring the natural world and connecting
the individual with it. This is a painting about the overwhelming feelings that are felt in the
presence of such a vast and spectacular landscape. It is a feeling that we cannot comprehend.
Something so immense in every way, so ominous, and something that sometimes threatens to overwhelm us.
What Friedrich and the Romantics called "The Sublime."
This is the site of the great German victory over Rome. Just over 2,000 years ago in the
Teutoburg forest, a superior Roman army was defeated by the warrior Arminius, leading an alliance of
different German tribes who ambushed the Romans by hiding behind the trees, leading to a belief that
the Teutoburg forest - or the land itself - was firmly on the side of the Germans. The victory became
an important part of the mythology of German nationalism, and many patriotic Germans see it as
the birth of the German nation. In 1806 Friedrich saw Germany (still a group of disparate States), shamefully
defeated by Napoleon - just as Goya had experienced Napoleon's violent March into Spain. A Renewed
interest in Arminius, and his struggles against the Roman occupiers led to Friedrich producing
this painting, just as the military resistance to Napoleon was gathering strength. It depicts the
tomb of Arminius guarded by soldiers, dwarfed in an immense landscape. It is a them of Friedrich's.
And here again, we see a human figure dwarfed by the landscape in this patriotic image of
a solitary French soldier lost in a wood that he will obviously never escape from - and the deathly
forest, was seen as a vengeful Germany that will swallow up its enemies. Like many of the Romantics
after the Napoleonic Wars, Friedrich was a strong supporter of a unified Germany, and in this way
it could be said that his work is "nationalistic". There is a deep-seated attachment to the landscape
in Germany, and Friedrich understood that - as did the Nazis. A full Century after Friedrich's death,
the Nazis would co-opt the German landscape to represent THEIR version of nationalism,
and Friedrich - unwittingly - became part of that nationalism even though the artist, a liberal
anti-authoritarian, and a passionate advocate of political change, would have been everything Hitler despised.
Casper David Friedrich was born in 1774 in Greifswald, Pomerania. His father was a
soap and candle manufacturer, His mother died when he was 7 years old - and a year later his
sister Elizabeth died, followed by a second sister Maria who died of typhus. But the greatest tragedy
of his childhood, happened when he was 13, and he witnessed his brother Johan fall through
the ice of a frozen lake and drown. These early losses had a lasting impact on Friedrich, and
throughout his life he suffered many bouts of depression = and we can see themes of melancholy
and loss reflected in his art. In 1790, he began his art studies in Greifswald, where he was introduced
to the theological concept of "seeing with one's inner eye". that of the imagination. Friedrich was
taught that what we see, has as much to do with what is inside us, as what is outside us. And it
would lead to the artist conveying in paint those subconscious thoughts and emotions that
transcend language. In the early 1800s he met the most influential man in his life, the Theologian
Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten, who would really help to shape the aesthetic attitudes of German
romantic art, and install in Friedrich, a belief in the spiritual capabilities of landscape.
Up until this point, landscape painting was seen as just the background to more important history
paintings or portraiture, but Friedrich's generation was the generation, that said Landscapes
could be just as much about ideas, emotions, and experiences, as figure painting. But this got
him in trouble with his first major Commission in 1808 - painted at the age of 34. It was an altarpiece
which shows a cross in profile at the top of a mountain, alone and surrounded by pine trees.
Hard for us to understand now, but it caused a huge Scandal. For one thing, its composition
lacked traditional perspective, and this would be reflected in many of his Future Works, which
were criticised for their lack of boundaries, with "nothing to hold on to", just a sense of "floating".
His rolling Mists and fogs and ominous landscapes are an aesthetic representation of the
"sublime" spirit that characterised the Romantic age. But most of the outrage over the painting,
was because, landscape had never been considered a suitable genre for overtly religious themes.
And of course, normally the crucifixion is shown as a human narrative populated by human figures, not
Christ dying alone. Friedrich's use of landscape in a religious context, reflected his own belief
in Kosegarten's teachings: That we should see landscape as "Christ's Bible". But it was just too
radical for the times. The Scandal did however bring Friedrich to the attention of a wider public.
The Age of Enlightenment was a European intellectual movement of the 17th
and 18th centuries, and it focused mainly on the power of human intelligence to explain the
natural world. "Romanticism" emerged as a response to the cold science of the Enlightenment, with
Romantics maintaining that art emerges from divine inspiration and the artist role is as
a mediator between the creative and the Divine. The "Romantic age" was characterised by a sense of
drama, and by the Sublime Spirit, a philosophical tradition where a power, or a force, an event, or
even beauty, is so overwhelming, so awe-inspiring and infinite, that it is beyond our comprehension.
Nature, wild and uncontrolled, became a major subject, and the focus shifted to reconnecting
with emotion and spirituality. Romanticism had a far-reaching impact with lasting consequences both
intellectually and artistically. After Napoleon's defeat, Friedrich would move away from landscape as a
"patriotic" symbol, to creating almost what you might call a spiritual landscape.
For Friedrich and the German Romantics, landscape was a representation of a Divine World Order, and man
was an individual who watches, contemplates, and feels, more than he calculates and he thinks.
Friedrich completed this oil painting in 1818. It was based on his extensive sketches of
the Elba Sandstone mountains, on the border of Germany and the Czech Republic. His Landscapes
though, don't exist as such, but are idealised scenes, an amalgamation of different features
that he would sketch on his travels around Dresden, and then construct his own interpretation of the
landscape in his Studio. They are the product of the artist's personal Vision, what what he
called his "inner eye" the vision of the Soul. It's worth discussing his methods of working.
Friedrich, led a hermit-like existence for much of his life and his Studio was completely bare with nothing
except a few instruments on the wall. Like his parents, he was a strict Lutheran, and this was
reflected in his austere monk-like lifestyle and Spartan Studio, more reminiscent of a meditation cell.
A visitor described him as "A Mystic with a brush", just the type beloved by The Romantics.
He kept the studio shutters closed, and would shut himself away from any distractions that
would disturb his inner Vision. We even have stories about him painting in the nude to get
this "completeness of the self". He was a fastidious technician, and the set square and rulers would be
used to adhere to strict proportions. One third of the composition depicts the sky, another third
features the figure, and the final third showcases the Rock on which the subject stands. Directly on
the central vertical axis, and with his waist on the horizontal. Along with a classic pyramid
structure, these elements create a painting with a powerful sense of space.
Friedrich often used what is known as a "Rückenfigur", but Wanderer above the Sea of fog", is perhaps the most famous
Rückenfigur in art, and it is a challenge to the traditions that have us reading the face of the
figure first, rather than read the landscape first. When you have a figure that faces you straight on,
there are very few questions to be asked, but because we can only read the back of the man,
we have so many questions. He looks over a vast panorama of clouds, mountains, and thick mist, and
because Friedrich chose a point of view on the same level as the man's head, we feel like we
are floating in space, an impossible position that encourages us to consider the perspective from the
protagonist's point of view. We are looking WITH the figure not AT the figure, and we have to consider
our own emotional response to the view. I think one of the reasons for the painting resonating
so powerfully, is that the figure's strength of pose, at the very edge of the mountain, is a
curious combination of loneliness and empowerment. At the same time we've all known that same feeling
standing in front of a vast landscape. We don't know who the actual figure is. Some say it's a
self-portrait of the artist, who shared the same red hair, but it's more likely to be Colonel Von
Brinken of the Saxon Army, who fought in Germany's Wars of Liberation, wearing the
green uniform of the volunteer Rangers, which would support this interpretation. Despite the
wind lightly blowing the fog, and the man's hair caught in the breeze, there is a Stillness to the
painting. We feel the man really contemplating the void before him, a tiny interloper in an
infinite World, and we can easily inhabit and understand those thoughts of feeling insignificant.
As with all art there are many ways of interpreting, and I'd like to look at two of them.
In a post-napoleonic age, Germany was still struggling to forge its identity, and if we
accept that the man portrayed IS Colonel von Brinken, then we know he was killed in action in 1813 or 1814.
Which would make "The wanderer above the Sea of fog", completed four years later,
a patriotic epitaph, to a brave Soldier. But there is also the religious or spiritual interpretation,
specifically Lutheran, that cannot be dismissed. We don't know if the wanderer is about to embark
on a journey, or if he has just finished one, but the rocks can be interpreted as the bow
of a ship, a commonly used symbol in religious art, to illustrate the church as a whole, making safe
passage through Stormy Waters. Luther translated the account of God's creation of Earth in the
Book of Genesis as: "A fog arose from the earth and moistened the entire land", which could suggest a
Creation-esque slant, with the figure overlooking unknown possibilities. There are so many ways of
seeing this painting, but really it's taken on a larger cultural significance, and it could
be seen as you - or me. In a private moment of contemplation, perhaps experiencing loneliness
or Elation, or a feeling of the sublime, standing on the edge where one more step could be our last.
The Wanderer, was not well received and marked the gradual decline of Friedrich's fortunes.
Always fighting depression he started to be seen as an eccentric, melancholy man, and
overly religious. His Patrons stayed away and he gradually slipped Into obscurity. Then in 1835,
he suffered a stroke that left the left side of his body paralyzed, effectively ending his career.
His legacy was tainted by Hitler's use of his imagery for Nazi propaganda.
And it wasn't until 1975 that art historians re-examined his work and reinstated him
as one of the most important figures in German romantic painting. Of all the great painters of
the Romantic age Friedrich is one of the most enigmatic. He expanded the possibilities of
landscape painting, enriching it with meaning and a symbolic significance of a particularly modern kind.
He strove to show that landscape painting must at least attempt to convey something beyond
mere "observation", and communicate something of the spiritual... something of the Divine.