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1817-18 Oil on canvas, 94,8 x 74,8 cm Kunsthalle, Hamburg In this painting Friedrich shows a lonely figure confronting nature in astonished reverence. Friedrich's figures who habitually turn their backs to gaze into the horizon or stare from windows with rapt attention are images of the artist. His Wanderer, frock-coated and stick in hand, has climbed to a rocky peak above swirling mountain mists; the viewer looks with his eyes, the angle of vision being exactly aligned to their level in the picture space. The foreground, the conventional plateau to give the viewer a fix on the subject, has been entirely dispensed with. Listen to Franz Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy, a piano piece composed in the same Romantic spirit as manifested by Friedrich's painting |
