Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 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 with his back to the viewer. He is wrapped in a dark
green overcoat, and grips a walking stick in his right hand. 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. 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.
The painting is composed of various elements from the Elbe Sandstone
Mountains 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.
Commentary Wanderer above the Sea of Fog is true to
the Romantic style and Friedrich's style in particular, being similar to other
works such as Chalk Cliffs on Rügen and The Sea of Ice. Gorra's 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. Dembo sympathised, asserting that Wanderer presents a
metaphor for the unknown future. Gaddis 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."
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." Influence
The painting has been reused repeatedly, for instance to promote a Canadian
musical. It was used as the cover of the board game Fantastiqa. A painting using
the same man with his back turned, titled "Wanderer" appears within the
computer game Minecraft. The title of the painting is the name of a song in
Wolves in the Throne Room's 2009 album Black Cascade. From the 1960s on,
Gotthard Graubner's "fog spaces", one of them entitled Erster Nebelraum - Hommage
à Caspar David Friedrich were clearly inspired by Friedrich's Wanderer above
the Sea of Fog. In 2008, the painting was used as inspiration for the
promotional image of David Tennant as Hamlet at the RSC. The German tenor,
Jonas Kaufmann, uses this painting on his Decca CD of Mozart, Schubert,
Beethoven, Wagner arias. He is pictured face forward replacing the back view of
the "Wanderer". The painting is also used on the cover of the Thus Spoke
Zarathustra Barnes and Noble Classics edition. The painting is also used on
the cover of Acting on Principle Cambridge University Press on Kantian
ethics. Canadian musician Ben Caplan references the painting on the cover of
his album Birds With Broken Wings featuring a pastiche of Caplan as the
wanderer from a different perspective. References
External links 'Wanderer above the Sea of Fog' Analysis
Sketches for the painting Idrobo, Carlos, He Who Is Leaving … The
Figure of the Wanderer in Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra and Caspar David
Friedrich’s Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, in: Nietzsche-Studien Band
41, Heft 1, Seiten 78–103, ISSN 1613-0790, ISSN 0342-1422, DOI:
10.1515/niet.2012.41.1.78, November 2012. degruyter.com
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