A bareheaded man stands dramatically on a rocky outcrop, supported by a walking stick and staring into an alarming vista of jagged crags, scrubby trees, and mountaintops hidden in menacing fog. Painted around 1818, Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog is nothing less than a Wertherian statement of communion with the divine as well as a passionate veneration of the natural world and the spiritual awe it inspires. The year 2024 is the 250th anniversary of Friedrich’s birth, and German art museums are pushing the boat out for the man whose work—for better or worse—provided the spiritual and emotional underpinning for the country’s national drive in the 19th century. The Sea of Ice, one of Friedrich’s most famous paintings, is on display in “Caspar David Friedrich: Infinite Landscapes,” at Berlin’s Alte Nationalgalerie.
—Andrew Pulver