Wanderer above the Sea of Fog

This iconic work of German Romanticism shows a man standing on a rocky crag, his back turned to the viewer, gazing across a turbulent sea of fog toward distant ridges. Composed from studies made in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, the painting is the defining example of Friedrich’s Rückenfigur device and of the Romantic contemplation of nature. It is held by the Hamburger Kunsthalle.