Wanderer above the Sea of Fog

Friedrich painted this at the exact moment "alpine wandering" emerged as a leisure activity in German-speaking Europe. The figure isn't a mystic; he's a tourist. The cane is a specific accessory — the Alpenstock, a tall, ironshod walking pole that early-1800s hikers carried up the new public trails in Saxon Switzerland. Within a generation it became kitsch. Friedrich caught the precise instant it still felt sublime. Now at Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg @hamburger_kunsthalle