Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, Caspar David Friedrich

Caspar David Friedrich was born in 1774 in Greifswald, Germany. Many his family members died when he was a child. In 1781 his mother died and then his two sisters and his brother died too. In 1790 Friedrich had his first art lessons and since 1794 to 1798 he studied in Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art.

Friedrich was a 19^th-century German Romantic landscape painter. As the painter said by himself his works weren’t accurate pictures of air, water, rocks, and trees but a reflection of soul and emotional filling of these objects.

The painting ‘Wanderer above the Sea of Fog’ was painted in 1818. The size of this picture is 94,8x74,8 cm. In the picture, we can see man’s back who looks into the distance. Like in many Freidrich’s pictures this man kind of represents a viewer. But many art critics think the man in this picture represents artist himself.

‘Wanderer above the Sea Fog’ combines a wonderful spontaneity in the image of nature with the spiritual and mystical experience. Mountains and clouds are part of the man's soul, as well as he himself is a part of them. The picture is based on a dramatic contradiction. A human dominates nature but, at the same time, he is insignificant in the environment of all these majestic rocks and the sea of fog.