Wander Above The Sea Of Fog (Tow #12)

     The Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog is one of the most iconic romantic paintings of all time, and is rightfully so. It was painted in 1818 by artist Caspar David Friedrich and depicts a man standing high on a cliff looking down over a land shrouded in fog.

     Caspar David Friedrich was one of the more well known painters of his era and is considered the most important German artist of his time. Most of his pieces were landscapes and were allegorical in nature. His work went on to be some of the most important pieces in all of German history and to influence the surreal and expressionist movements greatly.

      The images central figure is a man staring over a precipice. He is notably higher than everything else in the image, even the cliffs in the background. The image itself is very typical of the time period and the romantic movement. It shows a subject in nature and focuses on the power and beauty of nature, it is also a very emotionally evocative piece, adding further to its romantic undertones is the fact that the man is alone. The romantic movement was strongly centralized around introspective solitude and emotional reflection, which is shown in the mans staring into the fog and presumably pondering. 

     Two crucial symbols within the text are the authors intentional positioning of the man facing away, and the intense fog enveloping the surroundings. The man's distal orientation is used very powerfully to highlight the emotion of the piece. This is because it is impossible to tell what the man is feeling because we can see his face. It also in some ways makes the man easier to affiliate with because he could have the same face as one of us. The next device is the fog. The fog is interesting because everything about the man seems to suggest a ruler looking down over his nation, but there is nothing to be seen, just a vast empty landscape of fog.