The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Caspar David Friedrich · Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, the German title by which the canvas is known · oil on canvas, 94.8 by 74.8 cm · one figure seen from behind on a dark outcrop above a sea of fog, on the axis of an upright field · painted in Dresden, about 1817 (1818 is also given) · Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg · the work scored is the single canvas
Mode
Landscape as the sight of a seer; a figure seen from behind set on the axis of an upright canvas, with the view given through him
Mythos
The wanderer and the summit: the one who has climbed alone to see, the height from which a world is shown, the threshold above an abyss
Phase
One hour on a summit above the fog; painted in Dresden about 1817, in the years after the wars of liberation
Presentation
Oil on a canvas of 94.8 by 74.8 cm, upright; thin, seamless layers in the fog and the distances, the figure and the near rock dark against them; one figure and no building
Register
Cold, grand and quiet; awe and solitude, with terror held at the edge of a drop that is implied and not shown
Scale
One man, one rock, one sea of fog, under a square metre
Governing Proposition
A man in a dark green coat stands with his back to us on a dark outcrop at the centre of an upright canvas, and below him a sea of fog fills the space between the rock and the far peaks. The slopes of the distance descend toward his head, so that the vanishing focus of the view is a person, and the eye cannot reach the mountains without passing through him. The wager of the canvas is that a landscape can be made into the sight of someone; that the near world of dark, solid matter and the far world of pale dissolution can be joined only by a look; and that the summit, once reached, yields not knowledge but fog.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The canvas is oil, 94.8 by 74.8 centimetres, painted in Dresden about 1817; some sources give 1818. It hangs in the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg and is known by its German title, Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer. The format is upright, height to width about five to four, and the picture area is a little over seven tenths of a square metre. No signature, date or inscription is claimed for it. The work scored is this one canvas. The painter’s other figures seen from behind, and The Monk by the Sea of 1808 to 1810, stand around it as context and are not credited to it.
What it shows is soon told. A man in a dark green coat, seen from behind and bareheaded, his hair moved by wind and a walking stick in his right hand, stands on a dark outcrop of rock in the foreground, placed on the vertical axis of the field. Below and beyond him a sea of fog fills the middle distance, and rock spurs and wooded crests rise through it. At the right stands a larger mountain mass; far off at the left are further ranges; above everything is a pale sky with cloud. There is no other figure and no building. The near world is dark and solid; the far world is pale and dissolving; and between them there is nothing to walk on.
The composition’s chief fact is a meeting of lines. The slopes of the distance descend from the left and from the right, and the man’s head sits close to the point where they meet. The vanishing focus of the view is a person. Three things are required for this, and only three: the man, without whom the canvas is a fine view of fog among peaks, one of a type; the fog, without which the near rock would join the far mountains by continuous ground and the gulf would go; and the outcrop, without which he has nowhere to stand. The scale is compelled with them, small and upright, so that the figure is large enough to bar the view. What could change is the inventory of the distance: the spurs are a count, and the mass at the right is placed for balance.
Movement II
The fog is the omitted middle ground. In an ordinary landscape the eye walks from the foreground to the horizon over fields, roads and rivers; here it cannot, because the ground between the outcrop and the peaks has been taken away and replaced by weather. The gulf the man stands above is made by omission. That is why the fog is form and not mood: it is not laid over a landscape but put in the place of one, and the picture’s knowledge, that the world is reached by looking and not by going, depends on it. Where the mist breaks over the spurs it rises in wave-like crests, a pale sea, matter turned to weather.
The making is load-bearing here and nowhere so fully. The fog is laid in thin, smooth layers in which grey, white, blue and pale violet pass into each other without a seam, so that the mist reads as moving, and the distance recedes by tone alone, step by step, toward the sky. At the far left the last range cannot be told from cloud: the line between mountain and sky is lost, and that loss is the picture’s farthest point. The command of the medium is complete in these passages. Against them the figure is cut cleanly, dark on light, the coat one dark green and the hair touched with light.
One law governs the whole field, and it is the law of distance as dissolution. Everything near is dark, solid and defined; everything far is pale, veiled and unbounded; and every passage between obeys the gradient. The fog is not an exception to the law but its medium. The light is diffuse throughout, and nothing casts a strong shadow. The register that follows is cold, grand and quiet: the terror of the height is held at the edge, in the drop below the outcrop, which is implied and never shown. The cost is in the near world. The rock is dark and thinly described, a silhouette more than a substance, and between the summits of the picture it is ground, not height.
Movement III
The man has his back to us, and the knowledge of the canvas is carried by that back. Turn him to face us and the picture is a portrait in a landscape, which knows something else. Move him to the margin and he is staffage again, a small figure for scale, and the view is ours, unmediated. Set on the axis, at the apex of the rock, with the slopes converging on his head, he stands between the viewer and the view, and the eye cannot reach the distance without passing through him. The viewer is placed behind a viewer. The landscape is no longer a place; it is a sight, and it is someone’s.
The inheritance is plain. Behind the canvas stand the Alpine and mountain views of the late eighteenth century, the sublime landscape of the topographical tradition and Koch’s heroic mountain scenes, and the small figures of Dutch and German landscape who stand in a view to give it a measure. Behind it too stands the painter’s own practice, by 1817 settled, of composing a landscape from separate drawings into a vision rather than painting a place. The departure is to take the staffage figure, enlarge him and set him dead centre with his back turned. That is a real turn in what a landscape means.
It was not a new turn for the painter. The figure seen from behind was already his device, in Woman before the Rising Sun, in Two Men Contemplating the Moon, in Chalk Cliffs on Rügen, and the risk of his career had been run before. The canvas makes the turn on a proven path. The cost shows in the figure itself, which is stiff, a lay figure posed; the whole has the slight stillness of a picture assembled, and the far scenery, arranged and balanced, is set rather than necessary. The handling is controlled rather than inventive. The command is complete in the fog and adequate elsewhere.
Movement IV
The painter’s larger departure came a decade before this canvas. In The Monk by the Sea, painted from 1808 to 1810, a small figure seen from behind stands on a strip of shore before an empty field of sea and sky, and the world is withdrawn. In the Wanderer the same device is used with the world spread out: peaks, crests, a mountain mass, ranges fading to cloud. The public wager had been run at the Tetschen Altar and at the Monk. Set beside the earlier picture, the Wanderer is the more balanced and the more conventional composition, and it gathers what the earlier picture had already risked.
What it discloses can be stated. The world is given to a modern person as a view, from a standpoint that is his own; the summit is reached, and what it yields is not knowledge but fog. The self that climbed to see stands between us and what he sees, and the picture shows the solitary seer who can master a height and not a meaning. But the proposition can be stated two contrary ways, as mastery or as abandonment, and the canvas does not decide between them. Much of what it gives is a state, solitude and awe, which ranks below a meaning; and the Monk discloses the same condition with less comfort.
Its force on the field is real. It states, as clearly as any picture, that a landscape is the experience of a subject, and it gave Romantic painting its emblem of the solitary viewer before nature. Yet the reorganisation it states belongs to the painter’s work as a whole, and on the three axes that turn on this, The Unconcealment and The Swerve at 8.2 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.3, the canvas stands below the bar of the summit. The Starry Night, at 8.9, broke its maker’s own rule and founded a manner; this canvas gathers a device its maker had already made. The Fighting Temeraire, a Romantic landscape of the same generation, stands at 8.6, with a stated historical meaning where the Wanderer leaves a condition open.
Movement V
The coat is the one thing on the surface fixed to its moment. It is a single dark green, cut cleanly against the fog, and its dress has been read as the old-German costume of the war years, a patriotic statement of the time after 1815. Whether it makes that statement is open, and the canvas does not carry it: the costume brings history to the viewer, not into the image. The proposal that the figure memorialises a fallen officer is a hypothesis and has not been shown. The archetypes the picture builds are older and need none of this: the wanderer, the summit, the height from which a world is shown, the threshold above an abyss. The deeper readings, the mount of the temptation and Moses shown the land, are brought by readers.
The painter was neglected from about 1840, and his reputation lapsed for some sixty years after his death. The reach of the canvas came late and came largely as image: on book covers, on posters, in film frames, until it became the emblem of Romanticism, of the self-made individual and, uncomfortably, of national self-regard. A critical lineage runs from northern Romanticism to the Abstract Expressionists, and it belongs to the painter’s work as a whole. The questions remain open: mastery, contemplation or despair; whether the figure invites the viewer in or shuts him out; the date; the identification of the peaks. Much of what is asked is asked of the icon, not of the canvas, and the central meaning, the self before the world, is grasped at once.
The image has survived whole. No loss of figure, motif or passage is charged; the canvas is in apparently sound state; and the costume, its one tie to its decade, has outlived both its period and the uses made of it. What it holds is narrow: the natural order, a consciousness whose looking is the subject, and, by implication only, the sacred, in a height the picture neither names nor builds. There is no family, no labour, no settlement, no state and no other person, and The Encompassed stands at 6.9 for that. One man stands on one rock above one sea of fog, at the point where the lines of the world converge, and sees what cannot be reached.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged on the configuration. Remove the man and the canvas is a fine view of fog among peaks, one of a type. Remove the fog and the near rock joins the far mountains by the continuous ground of an ordinary landscape, so that the gulf he stands above goes. Remove the dark outcrop and he has nowhere to stand, and the near world of solid dark matter against the far world of pale dissolution is lost. Those three are required, and the scale is compelled: under a square metre and upright, it keeps the figure large enough to bar the view. What gives is the inventory of the middle and far distance. The spurs breaking the fog are a count, not a structure, and the great mass at the right is placed for balance more than for need.
Score: 8.4 / 10
What is disclosed can be stated: the world is given to a modern person as a view, from a standpoint that is his own, and the summit, once reached, yields not knowledge but fog. The self that climbed to see stands between the viewer and the view, and the picture discloses the condition of the solitary seer who can master a height and not a meaning. It is held well short of the top on three counts. The proposition can be read as mastery or as abandonment, and the canvas does not decide; that is richness on another axis, not disclosure here. Much of what it gives is a state, solitude and awe, which ranks below a meaning. And the painter’s own Monk by the Sea makes the same proposition more starkly.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Elevation is the work’s subject, and it is reached in more than one place. The fog: a pale sea with wave-like crests where the mist breaks over the spurs, matter turned to weather. The far ranges at the left, fading by steps until mountain cannot be told from cloud. The great mass at the right, solid against the drift. And the figure, in whom the transport is placed: the viewer feels the height by standing where he stands, at his back, with the drop below the outcrop implied and unseen. The register is cold, grand and quiet, with terror held at the edge and not given. Held below the top: the field is small, the elevation is of one register and one instant, and between its summits the near rock is dark ground, not height.
Score: 8.8 / 10
The archetypes are the wanderer and the summit: the one who has climbed alone to see, the height from which a world is shown, the threshold above an abyss. They are built, not alluded to. The structure of the canvas is the archetype: the figure on the axis at the apex of the near rock, the slopes converging toward him, the world spread below as a visible destination with no path to it. The particular holds: a coat, a stick, hair in the wind, rocks drawn as particular rocks and not as types. What keeps the axis at the gate and not above it: the deeper readings, the mount of the temptation, Moses shown the land, a memorial to a fallen officer, are brought by readers, not built; and the national reading of the costume is context the canvas does not carry.
Score: 8.5 / 10
The inheritance: the Alpine and mountain view of the late eighteenth century, the sublime landscape of the topographical tradition and of Koch’s heroic mountain scenes; the Dutch and German staffage figure; and the painter’s own practice, settled by 1817, of composing a landscape from separate drawings into a vision. The departure: the staffage figure enlarged and set dead centre with his back to us, so that the landscape is no longer a place but a sight seen by someone, and the viewer is placed behind a viewer. That is a real turn in what a landscape means. The stake was small. The figure seen from behind was already the painter’s device, and the public wager of his career had been run a decade earlier, at the Tetschen Altar and the Monk. A turn made on a proven path.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Would a different form change what the work knows? Almost wholly. The knowledge is that the world is a view from a self, and it is carried by the figure’s back: turn him to face us and the picture is a portrait in a landscape, which knows something else; move him to the margin and he is staffage again, and the view is ours, unmediated. The slopes converging on his head make him the vanishing focus, so that the eye cannot reach the distance without passing through him. The fog is form, not mood: it erases the middle ground, so that near and far have no joining path, and the gulf is made by omission. The upright format bars the view with his body. Held below the top because the far scenery, arranged and balanced, is set rather than necessary, and knows less than the near.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Evidence over promise: about two centuries, most of the literature from the last hundred and twenty years. The questions still open: whether the summit is mastery, contemplation or despair; whether the figure memorialises a fallen officer, as has been proposed and not shown; whether the coat makes a patriotic statement of the years after the wars of liberation; whether the figure seen from behind invites the viewer in or shuts him out; the date; the identification of the peaks; and the picture’s later life as an emblem of Romanticism, of the self-made individual and, uncomfortably, of national self-regard. Held below the top: much of the return is about the image as icon, not the canvas; the central meaning, the self before the world, is grasped at once and agreed; and the fog and the distances, subtle rather than dense, yield less to long looking than the fame suggests.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Published, so force and reach are scored together. The field is German and northern landscape painting of the 1810s. The force: the canvas states, as clearly as any picture, that a landscape is the experience of a subject, and it gives Romantic painting its emblem of the solitary viewer before nature. But the reorganisation belongs to the painter’s work as a whole, is made more radically in the empty field of the Monk, and is gathered here in a more balanced, more conventional composition. Reach is discounted for delay: the painter was neglected from about 1840 for decades. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the later life of the image, real and largely as public image, on book covers and posters and in film frames; and the critical lineage from northern Romanticism to the Abstract Expressionists, which belongs to the oeuvre.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Survival is shown over about two centuries, and what makes the work, the image, is whole. No loss of figure, motif or passage is charged, and none is invented; the canvas is oil in apparently sound state, and no damage or heavy restoration is charged. Presence is charged a little: the painter’s reputation lapsed for some sixty years after his death, and the picture’s present fame, as wide as any German painting’s, is presence and not proof, earning at most a tenth. The surface is fixed to its moment in one thing only, the costume, and the picture has outlived both its period and the uses made of it. At about two centuries it sits at the join of the two upper steps of the test: the top of the one, the foot of the other.
Score: 9.1 / 10
Judged as command of oil on a small upright canvas, to the same anchors as any medium. The making is load-bearing in the fog: thin, smooth layers in which grey, white, blue and pale violet pass into each other without a seam, so that the mist reads as moving and the distance recedes by tone alone, step by step to the sky. The figure is cut cleanly against it, dark on light, the coat a single dark green, the hair touched with light. The drawing of the near rock and of the spurs is exact. The costs: the near rock is dark and thinly described, a silhouette more than a substance; the figure is stiff, a lay figure posed; and the whole has the slight stillness of a picture assembled. The handling is controlled, not inventive: complete in the fog and adequate elsewhere.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the dark outcrop with its solid figure, and the faintest range at the far left, where mountain becomes sky. They obey one law, distance as dissolution: everything near is dark, solid and defined, everything far is pale, veiled and unbounded, and every passage between obeys the gradient. The figure belongs to the near world and looks into the far, and that is the picture’s argument. The fog is not an exception to the law but its medium. The light is diffuse throughout; nothing casts a strong shadow, and nothing contradicts. Held below the top because narrowness is not coherence: rock, fog, mountain, sky and one man, in one hour and one weather, make a small territory, and the law governs it completely.
Score: 8.7 / 10
The orders held in one structure: the natural order, in rock, mountain, cloud and weather; consciousness, in the one who looks and whose looking is the subject; and, by implication only, the sacred, in a height and a vastness the picture neither names nor builds. They are integrated: the converging slopes and the fog place each, and the self is set in nature as its measure. What holds the axis lowest is what is absent, which is nearly everything else the rubric lists: no family, no labour, no settlement, no state, no other person, and no history, since the costume brings history to the viewer and not into the image. The Starry Night, in a field of similar size, holds a village, a church and a cosmos, and its Encompassed stands at 7.4. The figure describes the form.
Score: 6.9 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.4 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 9.1, with The Sublime and The Living Form at 8.8. An image whole after about two centuries, outliving the lapse of its painter’s name, the period of its costume and the uses made of it; an elevation reached in the fog, the fading ranges, the mountain mass and the figure who carries the viewer’s transport; and a form in which the knowledge, that the world is a view from a self, exists only because a man’s back is set at the vanishing point and the middle ground is replaced by fog.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.9: the natural order and a consciousness are held, the sacred only by implication, and family, labour, settlement, state, history and every other person are absent. Above it, and below the rest, The Unconcealment and The Swerve at 8.2 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.3: the disclosure can be read as mastery or as abandonment and is not decided; the figure seen from behind was already the painter’s device, its risk run a decade earlier with the Monk; and the reorganisation of landscape belongs to the painter’s work as a whole more than to this canvas. The three are one fact: the canvas gathers, in a balanced composition, what the painter had already made.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.4 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.8, The Made at 8.7, The Inner Law at 8.7, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on three of its five: The Imperishable at 9.1 clears the bar of 8.5 and The Archetypal Deep meets it exactly at 8.5, but Pressure on Tradition at 8.3 falls short by two tenths, and The Unconcealment and The Swerve at 8.2 by three. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.2, against 7.5) and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.9. The twelve sum to 101.0 and average 8.42, which displays as 8.4, below the 9.0 the summit also requires; the standing in Tier IV is settled on the gate and on the aggregate alike.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the canvas in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (the figure seen from behind on the dark outcrop, the sea of fog with its spurs and crests, the mountain mass at the right, the fading ranges at the left and the sky), of how it was made and of its later life. The work scored is the single canvas, oil, 94.8 by 74.8 centimetres, painted in Dresden about 1817, with 1818 also given. The painter’s other figures seen from behind, among them Woman before the Rising Sun, Two Men Contemplating the Moon and Chalk Cliffs on Rügen, and The Monk by the Sea, are context and evidence of where the turn was first made, and are not scored. The picture’s later use as public image is weighed on reach only, never as the object; the critical lineage to later painting is credited to the painter’s work as a whole. No words of the painter’s are quoted; the German title is given as the title by which the canvas is known. The meaning of the costume and the proposal that the figure memorialises a fallen officer are stated as open. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them whether the title is the painter’s own, when the canvas entered the Kunsthalle and who owned it before, its showing and reception in the painter’s lifetime, its technical examination, condition and conservation history, the identification of its rocks and peaks with drawings made in a particular range, and the date and course of the revival of the painter’s reputation.