Romanticism · 1818
Caspar David Friedrich 1774–1840
Kunsthalle Hamburg · Hamburg
A lone figure surveys a sea of fog from a rocky peak — the defining image of Romanticism's sublime solitude.
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Chapter 1 of 7
You are looking at the defining image of German Romanticism. Caspar David Friedrich painted this in 1818, a decade after Napoleon's armies shattered the old world order. Into that uncertainty he placed a solitary figure on a mountain summit — back turned, gazing into the unknown.
He is not showing you a landscape. He is showing you the act of confronting one.
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