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| The hiker above the sea of fog Caspar David Friedrich, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
Introduction—Standing Before the Abyss
Ladies and gentlemen,
Lovers of art and seekers of beauty, today we embark on a journey into the misty heights of Romanticism.
Our guide is Caspar David Friedrich, and our compass is one of his most iconic works—Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818).
This painting is more than a landscape; it is a vision of humanity poised between the known and the unknown, a meditation on solitude, transcendence, and the sublime.
Through each stage—drawing, underpainting, layering, refinement—we will see how the image grows and how the idea of the Romantic sublime is built stroke by stroke.
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| Blank Canvas |
Stage 1: The Blank Canvas—Silence Before Creation
Every masterpiece begins in silence. Before Friedrich lies a stretched canvas, prepared with a smooth white ground of gesso.
To most, it is an empty surface; to Friedrich, it is potential incarnate. He stands before it, not with an idle brush, but with a sense of reverence. For him, the canvas is a threshold: what he paints here will not merely depict nature but reveal the spirit within it.
The blank canvas symbolizes openness. It is the visual equivalent of the fog that will later dominate the work—an undefined space waiting to be filled with meaning. keyword anchor: “blank canvas in Romantic art.”
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| Underpainting |
With a stick of charcoal or a sharpened brush dipped in ink, Friedrich begins the drawing.
His hand moves with precision, not toward detail but toward composition. First, the upright figure of the wanderer: centrally placed, back to the viewer, hair tousled by the wind, posture erect yet contemplative.
His stance suggests both mastery and vulnerability—he dominates the cliff yet is dwarfed by the immensity of nature before him.
Next, Friedrich sketches the cliffs upon which the wanderer stands: jagged, angular, and anchoring the foreground. Beyond them, he outlines the hazy contours of mountain peaks, soon to be submerged in fog. These lines are faint, hesitant, as if already dissolving into mist.
The drawing sets the geometry of the painting: strong verticals of the figure, strong horizontals of the cliff, and vast diagonal sweeps of receding peaks. Already the balance between man and nature is established.
Underpainting plate
Stage 3: The Underpainting—Grounding the Atmosphere
Now the brush takes on muted tones—thin washes of earthy browns, soft grays, and diluted greens. Friedrich lays down an underpainting, not to finalize, but to set atmosphere and depth.
The cliffs are washed in umber and ochre, rough but solid. The distant mountains are sketched in pale blues and grays, already veiled in translucence.
The sky, stretching vast above, is grounded in a pale, cool tone—blue merging into silvery white.
It will later glow with light, but for now it is a soft ground against which the figure will be silhouetted.
The underpainting’s purpose is to anchor the values, to ensure that light and shadow, solidity and vapor, find their place.
Layered Landscape
Stage 4: Layering the Landscape—Building the Sublime
Now Friedrich begins to breathe life into the background. With slow, thin layers of oil paint, he strengthens the sky, layering pale blues and pinkish tones at the horizon.
He creates the fog in soft, feathered strokes, using the technique of glazing to give it transparency.
The mountains are suggested rather than described: faint ridges, dissolving edges, a presence more felt than seen.
The fog swallows detail, leaving behind form without clarity, mystery without solution.
The cliffs beneath the wanderer grow darker and sharper, painted in thick, textured strokes to contrast with the vaporous depth below.
Here we see Friedrich’s mastery: the stage is not a landscape of fact but of feeling.
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Stage 5: The Wanderer—Human Presence in Nature
At last, Friedrich turns to the wanderer. He blocks in the figure with muted dark green, the frock coat typical of the Romantic intellectual. The boots are sturdy, the walking stick firm, signs of a trek completed. His hair is painted in warm, light strokes, tousled by the high wind.
But Friedrich avoids giving us a face. The figure looks away, outward into the mist. He becomes an everyman, a proxy for the viewer. We see not what he sees, but we share in his perspective.
The figure’s presence is paradoxical: solitary yet universal, insignificant yet central. He is a human scale set against infinity.
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| Underpainting |
Layered Landscape
Stage 6: Refinement—The Dialogue Between Man and Nature
With each refinement, Friedrich strengthens the dialogue.
The fog is softened with glazes of white, gray, and pale yellow, creating a living mist.
The rocks beneath the wanderer are sharpened, jagged, immovable.
The contrast is deliberate: solidity beneath him, impermanence before him. The figure is isolated yet elevated, suggesting both mastery and alienation.
Light is added subtly: a glow at the horizon, hinting at dawn or dusk. The painting does not fix time, for it is timeless—an eternal confrontation with the sublime.
Stage 7: The Final Painting—Romantic Vision Completed
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| The hiker above the sea of fog Caspar David Friedrich, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
Now the masterpiece stands complete. The wanderer is firm upon his rock, yet vulnerable before the immensity.
The fog stretches endless, the mountains rise and fall like specters. The sky hovers vast, inviting reflection.
This is not simply a landscape—it is philosophy in paint.
Friedrich has captured the Romantic sublime: the human soul in confrontation with the boundless, the eternal, the unknowable.
The viewer, standing before the canvas, becomes the wanderer. We, too, gaze into the sea of fog, our thoughts lost in infinity.
All the images above, except the first and the last, are generated with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).
Ladies and gentlemen, in retracing Friedrich’s process—from the blank canvas, to the trembling lines of the drawing, to the veils of mist, to the solitary figure—we have glimpsed how Wanderer above the Sea of Fog was created.
It is more than a painting. It is an invitation to stand, as the wanderer does, on the precipice of existence, looking out into mystery.
And in that moment, we are reminded of what Romantic art sought to reveal: that nature is vast, that humanity is small, and that in this tension lies the sublime.
