Wanderer above the Sea of Fog

c. 1817

Oil on canvas, 94.8 × 74.8 cm. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg

A man in a dark coat stands on a rocky summit above valleys filled with mist. Hokanson and Seidenstein (Met) call it a textbook case of the Romantic sublime.

Look at the figure: one large person fills the center of an upright canvas, both rare in the painter's work.
The view was put together in the studio: the foreground rock comes from a drawing made in Saxon Switzerland in June 1813, other landforms from studies of 1808.
The painting carries no signature or date, so its year is an estimate.
Because he turns away, we watch a person looking instead of meeting the scene directly, and seeing itself becomes the subject. Who he is cannot be established.
On permanent loan from a Hamburg foundation that bought it in 1970. The museum describes its ownership history as unresolved and a matter of concern.

Rückenfigur: German for a figure seen from behind, placed so that the viewer looks along with it.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (PD-Art)