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Caspar David Friedrich
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (ca. 1818)
In Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (ca. 1818), a man wearing a dark green overcoat and boots overlooks a cloudy landscape, steadying himself with a cane. The figure stands at the centre of distant converging planes, and the midpoint of the painting rests at his chest. Art historian Joseph Koerner interprets this to mean “The heart is the centre of the universe”.
Over the past two centuries, the image has become a cultural icon and is considered the quintessential Romantic artwork. The aesthetic began as a reaction against the Enlightenment values (logic, rationality, order) that partially contributed to the French Revolution of 1789. Throughout Europe, writers, artists, and musicians turned to emotion, imagination, and the sublime for inspiration, placing focus on the power of nature. In particular, the period exalted individuals and their strong emotions. Friedrich exemplified these qualities as he placed one man, gazing at a vast and unknowable territory, in the middle of his canvas.
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (ca. 1818)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 95cm x 75cm
Original from https://www.artsy.net/artwork/caspar-david-friedrich-wanderer-above-the-sea-of-fog
The Sea of Ice, also called The Wreck of the Hope (1822)
Friedrich’s Sea of Ice, arguably the most famous polar painting, was partly inspired by Edward Parry’s Northwest Passage expedition in 1819–20. Although he never travelled to the Arctic, Friedrich sketched ice floes along Dresden’s Elbe River, which would freeze during winter. Thick slabs of ice are piled into the shape of an alpine peak, and this rocklike mass recalls cemetery gravestones. Emblems of death appear in the mast and barely visible hull of a ship crushed by the ice.
The Sea of Ice/ The Wreck of the Hope (1822)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 96.7 cm × 126.9
Original image from The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH
The Sea of Ice corresponds to Friedrich’s withdrawal from society and state of mind after his art became neglected. Many art historians have speculated on the painting’s meaning: its implications of human vulnerability, death, and potential redemption through faith. Some believe that its foreboding quality alludes to the clamp down on political freedom in Prince Metternich’s Germany. The significance of this painting resides in Friedrich’s introduction of a complex web of ideas into the iconography of Arctic landscapes.
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