‘Wanderer above the Sea of Fog,’ by Caspar David Friedrich

I’ve just hung a print of this inspirational 1818 German Romantic piece above my desk. As you can imagine, I’m thrilled to have it there.

It has that feeling you get when you’ve just conquered a piece of work, a line of thought, something with which you’ve been struggling—you’ve reached a new plateau and you see how all your previous work and thinking fits together—and you’re at that moment of rest, savouring the moment before conquering the next peak.

Like I say, thrilling.

And the piece didn’t cost an arm or a leg. It came at a very reasonable price from Inspirationz, with the words inscribed in the clouds,

“Happy are those who dream dreams, and
are ready to pay the price to make them come true.”

It’s made me a very happy man.

Die Frau am Fenster - Caspar David Freidrich

A “here and there” painting.

An interior looking out to an exterior.

An insider observing an observer looking out.

According to Helmut Borsch-Supan, who reckons Friedrich’s work is full of cultural symbolism,

The figure seen from the back represents Friedrich’s wife Caroline, and the room is the studio that Friedrich used after 1820. The view extends over the River Elbe to the opposite shore, which symbolizes paradise. The cross-like shape formed by the supports dividing the window pane becomes a Christian symbol, and the dark, close interior represents the terrestrial world.

And if you go even further, to real natural symbolism -- to form expressing feeling -- we might recognise as Jay Appleton does “the importance of the immediate foreground and the ‘themes of frustrated longing, of lust for travel or escape, which [run] through romantic literature’” and through so much of western art – expressing what Appleton says is “ a ubiquitous and enduring ecological process” which is expressed here too in a poem translated from the German:

The stars were shining with golden light
as I stood alone by the window
and listened to the distant sound
of the posthorn in the still countryside.
My heart became inflamed in my body,
and I thought secretly to myself:
Ah, if only I could journey with them
into that magnificent summer night!
- J. von Eichendorff, Sensucht

And you thought it was just a nice picture.

In good art, you see, nothing is accidental.

Monaco in Riva al Mare - Caspar David Friedrich (1810)

Sea of Ice - Caspar David Friedrich, 1824

                 
Friedrich was the German master of nineteenth-century romantic painting, in his case mastery in depicting landscapes of emotional extremity.

Chalk Cliffs on Rugen - Caspar David Friedrich

Caspar David Friedrich, Chalk Cliffs on Rugen, 1818-19.

TAG: Art

Wanderer

'Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog' by Caspar David Friedrich