Whether he was depicting a cemetery entrance, a foggy landscape, a shore with an overcast sky, the chalk cliffs of Rügen, or a relatively serene moonlit nightscape, Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) made landscape painting the genre par excellence in the Romantic cultural movement. His treatment of the natural world in his artistic output aligns with a series of beliefs shared by the Romantics, notes art historian Julian Jason Haladyn.“Friedrich describes the world in its modern abstractness,” writes Haladyn. “In his paintings, unknowable realities are framed by the abstractions of nature, represented as mediated experiences that must be created in and through subjective experience.”The Sea of Ice by Caspar David Friedrich, ca. 1823 via Wikimedia Commons Influenced by his teacher Johann Gottfried Quistorp, who was known to take his students to outdoor drawing exercises; by Dutch landscape painting; and by the Sturm und Drang literary movement (think: Goethe and Schiller), Friedrich modernized landscape painting not only by depicting a type of nature with the potential to veer toward hostility but also by establishing Rückenfiguren—figures seen from the back—as key elements in his art. Rückenfigur designates a modern variant of Staffage—human figures in landscape art who mainly exist to provide a sense of scale—associated with eighteenth-century European painting.“Our relation to the Rückenfigur arguably produces a visual and conceptual distance by allowing us to be present in the painting even while obviously absent, the figure being our vicarious self,” reasons Haladyn. “This distance, however, requires us to be more actively involved in the experience of the painting if we are to enter its world.”An early example of Friedrich’s revolutionary approach to landscape art is his 1808–1810 painting Monk by the Sea, in which a small figure in a dark robe looks out into an unsettled sea under a substantially cloudy sky. No ships are visible, and it’s unclear what the subject is actually contemplating.While its presence does give some scale to the vastness of the sublime landscapes it finds itself in and emphasizes its loneliness, the Rückenfigur doesn’t always stand alone.“The privileged place assigned to humanity in the world no longer could be taken as a given,” elaborates Haladyn, “not least because of the increasing sense of relativity that came with existing in a universe without (known) limits.”The Life Stages by Caspar David Friedrich, 1834 via Wikimedia Commons Perhaps Friedrich’s best-known work is the 1818 Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, which features a man standing upon a rocky precipice, facing away from the viewer to gaze across a landscape covered in a thick sea of fog pierced by ridges, trees, and mountains.“It’s a visualization of modern subjectivity as an act of doubling: the (painted) wanderer stands in front of us as we view the painting, leading us to try to imagine ourselves in his privileged position overlooking the scene,” writes Haladyn. “Our experience of reality is perpetually mediated, and we are made to feel an increasing disconnect between self and the world.”Friedrich’s landscapes contend with the concept of the sublime, interpreted as unquantifiable greatness and the awe it inspires. First theorized by Pseudo-Longinus in the first century CE, the sublime was fleshed out by Edmund Burke in the eighteenth century as it pertained to the arts. Immanuel Kant further expanded it, and the sublime eventually became one of the main tenets of Romanticism. Friedrich achieves this by fully embracing the concept of horror vacui, namely the fear of empty spaces.“In Friedrich’s paintings, we are not spared the fear of the void; on the contrary, it is the horror vacui of his imagery that most readily signals the hidden existence of a sublime presence,” writes Haladyn.While its presence does give some scale to the vastness of the sublime landscapes it finds itself in and emphasizes its loneliness, the Rückenfigur doesn’t always stand alone.“Friedrich is famous for capturing a melancholic solitude through images of lonesome wanderers at rest in sublime landscapes,” writes art historian Nina Amstutz in Studies in Romanticism, using his 1817 painting Two Men by the Sea as an example. “But these figures just as often come in pairs, which complicates the sense of absolute isolation often read into these paintings.”Easter Morning by Caspar David Friedrich, ca. 1828–1835 via Wikimedia Commons One can see that the men stand at the summit of their individual rocks as if born into parallel universes that, while adjacent, never touch. They’re their own origin and their own passage between them, but this “between” seems to define their relationship to each other.“The Romantic period witnessed a renewed interest in communal social structures,” Amstutz continues. “These sentiments spawned a concept of reconciling individual liberty with participation in group life.”Weekly Newsletter[contact-form-7]Friedrich’s art and signature style(s) didn’t remain confined within the Romantic period. In fact, his sublime landscapes, complete with Rückenfiguren, influenced twentieth-century art, particularly the Symbolists, the Expressionists, and the Surrealists. One can cite, without claiming to be exhaustive, Edvard Munch, whose painting The Lonely Ones (1896) references Friedrich’s Rückenfiguren; René Magritte’s painting The Human Condition (1933), a surrealist take on sublime landscapes via a framing device comprising curtains and an easel; and Paul Nash’s Totes Meer (1941), a graveyard of crashed planes that, in terms of composition, references Friedrich’s 1823 Sea of Ice.Friedrich’s mannerisms percolated into pop culture. Fandom communities have started noticing that the likes of Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild, Netflix’s adaptation of The Witcher, Elden Ring, and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth have all displayed either cover art, key art, or in-game stills featuring characters standing on a cliff and gazing at a type of nature; in some cases, the games force the player character (a proxy for the individual) to learn how to coexist with an unsettling vastness. And Robert Eggers, whose Nosferatu is but the latest reinterpretation of the Dracula myth, openly references the art of Friedrich.Teaching TipsExplore historical commentary on Friedrich’s painting:Angela Hagen, “Some Pleasant Products of German Romantic Painting” (1931)Alfred Rohde-Königsberg, “Caspar David Friedrich in Königsberg” (1934)Alice Newlin, “Romanticism in Prints” (1936)Alfred Neumeyer, “Is There a Romantic Style?” (1937)Hermann Beenken, “Caspar David Friedrich” (1937)Take a field trip! The exhibition Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature runs through May 11, 2025, at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.Support JSTOR Daily! Join our membership program on Patreon today.The post The Case of Caspar David Friedrich appeared first on JSTOR Daily.