Talk:Wanderer above the Sea of Fog

Untitled
That's not an animal in the Chalk Cliffs on Rügen picture, as per the description in the article, it's a man on his hands and knees looking over the edge of the cliff. R011ingthunder 01:55, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks for that. He must have been pretty hairy then ;) -- Anonymous Dissident  Talk 02:16, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Surprised we didn't have this before! Someone should compile a list of important paintings for WP:MEA. Zagalejo 05:18, 11 August 2007 (UTC)


 * "Important" paintings is a novel concept. :-) Even the most artistic and iconic paintings are devoid of importance.  I  think that it is claimed that Picasso's "Guernica" influenced the Spanish Revolution, which would make it important, but I cannot think of another example.  A list of great, notable, iconic, artistically influential, etc. paintings would be a wonderful idea, with a brief note saying why each is included.  72.177.123.145 (talk) 01:48, 8 April 2013 (UTC)Eric

This article makes a lot of claims about the reading of this work that I don't believe can be backed up. In addition to that, the grammer is very awkward. Some words are repeated in unusual ways and phrases sometimes start out as facts but have rambling opinions tacked on at the end. It should be re-worked. It is a serious problem for Wikipedia that people's individual interpretations about works of art are published. The article content should only consist of facts (which does not exclude a historically factual intepretation from a worthwhile source such as another important artist, historical figure or field expert). Justinjuicebox (talk) 22:37, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Words
The word "desecration" has been used here in the wrong sense. I'm trying to think of the word that the writer intends, and it keeps slipping away. Help somebody! Amandajm (talk) 12:08, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I thought of it! It's "discrimination" Amandajm (talk) 12:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Miscellaneous
This painting is also mentioned in the book "If the Dead Rise Not" by Philip Kerr. It is used as an illustration of how a character feels after having no choice but to leave her lover. Returning to America from Germany in 1936. A second painting is also mentioned in the same passage by Friedrich this is "The Sea of Ice" again as an illustration of the character's emotional state. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Petepsy (talk • contribs) 10:16, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Pop culture section
The pop culture section is a classic example of a miscellaneous collection of trivia, described in Manual of Style/Trivia sections. First, all of the uncited bits should be deleted. Next, the remainder, which has citations, should be integrated into a relevant section of the article. The difficulty in finding a relevant section for things like a tangential connection with the Hound of the Baskervilles is a good clue that it should be removed altogether. If substantial citations can be found to show that art and culture authorities find any of the parts of the pop culture items to be significant, then that would be a reason to keep them.A list of every odd example of a reference to Wander above the Sea of Fog, without rhyme or reason, would be just the sort of thing WP:INDISCRIMINATE says is not encyclopedic. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 03:39, 2 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I deleted it entirely. Every famous painting has pop culture references, so it's not appropriate here for the reasons you mentioned.--Chimino (talk) 23:00, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

File:Caspar David Friedrich - Wanderer above the sea of fog.jpg to appear as POTD
Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Caspar David Friedrich - Wanderer above the sea of fog.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on April 7, 2013. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2013-04-07. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. Thanks! — Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:43, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Influence?
Is the commentary "Ryan Britt wrote for Tor.com that the painting's iconic composition has been highly influential on the composition of scenes in stage or screen productions such as..." encyclopedic or just original research? Who is Ryan Britt and what makes his blog authoritative? - Pointillist (talk) 12:48, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Looks like blog spam and OR to me...Modernist (talk) 12:57, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I would have removed it, except that it was originally contributed by a more experienced editor (Sandstein: diff). Given that you are rumoured to be this artist's alter ego, perhaps you could do what's necessary? - Pointillist (talk) 13:53, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Lost Girl "The Wanderer" plot.
I know this painting - and the figure in it - is playing a key role in the fantasy show Lost Girl's ongoing third season plot, I think that's probably worth mentioning, it's central to the whole arc. Exactly what it means, or who the figure is going to turn out to "be" within the show, is yet to be resolved, but there's been a very strong emphasis on it for several episodes now.

The finale has only aired in Canada as yet, it will air in the US soon, but The Wanderer character is hugely important. He's implied to be the heroine's father, and a much feared villain of great power. Just to give some context, the tarot card appears at key plot points to signpost his influence over events throughout the season, sometimes accompanied by the song The Wanderer by Dion. He appears in person for a moment towards the end of the final episode, basically exactly as he is in the painting, right down to the pose. The cliffhanger final shot of the season is another one of his cards, this time with the heroine apparently trapped in the painting with him. The storyline is going to span at least two seasons, and he's likely to be the villain next year. Lost Girl isn't a huge show, but The Wanderer has been a huge part of the series this year.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.83.249.195 (talk) 22:19, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the heads-up. I've done some searches for "Lost Girl" "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" and apparently the painting was used as the image on the Wanderer tarot card in a recent episode. Unfortunately none of the sources I've found so far is what Wikipedia would call reliable (most of them seem to be self-published) so at the moment this isn't properly encyclopedic content. The situation might well change if the storyline gets critical coverage in mainstream media (e.g. national newspapers). Hope this helps - Pointillist (talk) 22:46, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Referenced in the The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild cover
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0e/BreathoftheWildFinalCover.jpg 2601:18D:681:C8F8:F01F:12CB:5205:B43D (talk) 17:48, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

"The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" a forgery ? See the german WP-article:  provenance + source criticism + chronological dating
Latest insights: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Wanderer_%C3%BCber_dem_Nebelmeer#Provenienz
 * The work was unknown before 1939 appeared first time – "market fresh" 1939 in a dubious Berliner art gallery.
 * There are some clues that the painting is a forgery. That means it might be painted in the style of Caspar David Friedrich.
 * For the first time, the painting was presented to the public in the summer of 1959 as "Lent from a private collection" in the London Tate Gallery under the title "Mountaineer in a misty Landscape".

Would be very pleased, if the informations are included in the english WP-article. --2.240.155.59 (talk) 02:21, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

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Referenced in Minecraft
Would it make sense to put in a little note that tells about how this painting was referenced in the game Minecraft, or is that not relevant enough to make the article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.86.200.134 (talk) 22:04, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

References in the Description Section
What is the justification for reference 3 in the description? Reference 4? I'm not saying these secondary works don't deserve a citation somewhere or a place in the bibliography. But those footnotes seem unwarranted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:2000:14C6:E10B:C5F:C86F:6FB2:C9E5 (talk) 18:57, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Team-B-Vital Improvement Drive
Hello all!

This article has been chosen as this week's effort for WP:Discord's #team-b-vital channel, a collaborative effort to bring Vital articles up to a B class if possible, similar to WP:Articles for Improvement. This effort will run for up to seven days, ending early if the article is felt to be at B-class or impossible to further improve. Articles are chosen by a quick vote among interested chatters, with the goal of working together on interesting Vital articles that need improving.

Thank you! Rema goxer (talk) 23:01, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Ideology section has no place here, & bogus references.
The ideology of the author of the painting should be on their own wikipedia page, not this painting. It distracts from the painting itself.

Additionally, the references are bogus. Reference [c] does not mention that the author was an 'outspoken supporter of German liberal and nationalist feeling" nor does reference [15] mention that "Nationalists such as Friedrich thus identified themselves with restoring a lost national greatness", or that "Altdeutsche costumes were banned in 1819 by the Carlsbad Decrees", the book isn't even on the right topic.

I recommend removing this section. Whole Oats (talk) 08:36, 18 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Pinging, who wrote that section. Endwise (talk) 09:02, 18 July 2022 (UTC)


 * The ideology of the painter is relevant to the article on the painting if the painting is specifically part of that. See Liberty Leading the People for one famous example from Romanticism where moving the ideology to the painter would be missing the whole story.
 * "c" is an endnote, not a reference. Please read WP:REFGROUP; the "notes" section is for explanatory side notes, not references.  That said, for reference 15 to Koerner, you seem to be on to something - I possibly did mess up the reference mildly because re-checking Joseph Koerner's book, he tells the Luther story but for the outfit just describes the "maybe a Saxon ranger" story that Borsch-Supan called outdated and wrong.  That said, that entire paragraph is from the reading I did on this a few months ago.  Norbert Wolf's book mentions the Old-German outfits on p. 57, for one.  I can go double-check if you like and add in the extra references, but Friedrich's liberal feelings is non-controversial (he didn't get a paid government position because the post-Napoleonic government didn't like him, as an example).  The Carlsbad Decrees are more of a side note, I'll grant, since they come after the painting of the work - but are still interesting, and they're discussed along with Friedrich's reaction to them in the sources.  SnowFire (talk) 17:02, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Koerner identifies the clothing as a ranger (Jäger) uniform of the sort worn by soldiers who fought against Napoleon's forces. Koerner does discuss "old German" costumes, but not in reference to this painting (it comes in a much later section of the book). Koerner really should not be cited as the source for the information you have presented here. Owunsch (talk) 16:07, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
 * First off, I'm not the one who stuck that bit in the lede section, so no complaints about removing it from there. And thanks for taking a look at the article!  Certainly won't claim I'm an expert here.
 * That said... are you saying that this Altduetsche-or-not is a contested matter?  The impression I got was "true, but too boring to write outright every time it comes up."  I'm not a fan as to how the article sets it up as if there's a controversy when it might merely be not every art book explicitly writing down every true fact.  It's not even clear that the claims of a jager vs. Altdeutsche are necessarily in direct contradiction with one another.  It's entirely possible it's a Saxon jager *and* in Altdeutsche wear.  And while Koerner doesn't dryly say "This is a list of paintings with the Altdeutsche costume", he does mention Wanderer directly after such a discussion, and we have Wolf making this connection explicit (and also essentially saying that all of Friedrich's post-1815 stuff was Altdeutsche-inflected).  While I'd prefer not to do such a Frankenstein connection, in this case, it doesn't seem that unreasonable.
 * Also, per edit summary, Borsch-Supan's 2005 "Caspar David Friedrich" p. 116 says that the tradition that it was a Saxon "Forstbeamter" (forest official?) named Herr von Brincken is "ungenauen" (inauthentic / not genuine), but he doesn't make clear if he's referring to the identification specifically with von Brincken as inauthentic, or the identification of it being a Saxon forester in general as being wrong. Also, the English translation seems to just call it a "Tradition" and leaves out the "inauthentic" part.  Hmm.  I see from your user page that you're in academia; do you have access to just ask an eminent art historian for if this was intended as an Altdeutsche costume or not?  If it is, then I'd say keep it in, and if Wolf is just wrong, then leave it out, but I'm not a huge fan of leaving it in-but-qualified when the current sources don't really seem to record a dispute.  SnowFire (talk) 01:10, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't necessarily say that it's contested, but the sources definitely don't provide a consistent description of the outfit. I think you are misreading Koerner. The fact that he mentions Wanderer a page or two after his discussion of Altdeutsche clothing doesn't mean that he thinks the figure is wearing this clothing. His description of Altdeutsche clothing also does not really fit with the figure in Wanderer: "apparel consisted of a short black jacket and shirt with stand-up collar, a barret, soft-leather shoes (rather than the traditional student footgear of jack-boots and spurs)." The hats seem to be the most distinctive feature of Altdeutsche garb, so it's not clear to me that Wanderer is a good example. The greenish color of the clothing in Wanderer also does not fit with the traditional black of Altdeutsche outfits. Owunsch (talk) 20:22, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Duplicate
The final paragraph of the lede section is an exact duplicate of the section titled 'Reception'. Seems that one of these is unnecessary. 24.87.154.112 (talk) 21:32, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * No, only the first sentence. I can live with that. Johnbod (talk) 22:12, 12 January 2024 (UTC)