Compare and Contrast

Casper David Friedrich Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog 1818 and William Henry Jackson In the Rockies 1873

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Comparisons

The gures in the two scenes are used to emphasize the landscape and its sense of scale.

This idea has been replicated in Thomas Morans painting Nearing Camp, Evening on the Upper Colorado River; Wyoming 1882, where he uses a pack of horse back riders to display the vast size of the cliffs by the river.

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Both scenes convey a landscape too vast for humans to comprehend and show a sense that man does not belong.

The scenes are both highly masculine views of the landscape. The foregrounds are both void of anything distracting, this has been a conscious choice in both incidences to clear the scene of anything detracting from the awe inspiring landscape beyond. Both scenes portray a sense of escapism, as the artistic styles contrast the changing society so too does the scenes display the gure which escapes that society.

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The two scenes portray a wondrous and awe inspiring landscape which denotes the feeling of another world, distant and unknown. Friedrichs painting in particular is a direct reaction against the industrial revolution and the scientic categorization and controlling ideals of society. Jacksons photograph mirrors this ideal with its central theme devoted to pioneering. Both scenes are absent of all life except for the central gure, the scenes are void of trees, animals and settlements. This shows a barren world without life, often what we think of as the unknown land.

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The scenes represent the want for nding God, a way of nding God through nature. The gures are seen elevated to the clouds, capturing a privileged view of the heavens. Both gures are facing away from the viewer, signifying a sense that the audience of the images can not see Heaven or God, but that the gures in the scenes can. The scenes use height as a tool for portraying that which cannot be captured, the unknown land and with this the thought that God might lie in those unseen recesses. Before ight the unobtainable was the sky, afterward it became outer space.

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Contrasts

Friedrichs painting is seen as the more romantically beautiful of the two. As well as this the scene is more detailed than the photograph, however this may be purely down to the photographic technologies of the time. The framing of the two scenes are vastly contrasting, the painting displaying the gure central in the scene and close to the viewer, where as the photograph has its gure to the right hand side of the frame and at least 100 yards off from Jacksons camera.

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Bibliography

Wilton A. and Barringer T. American Sublime, 2002, Tate Publishing

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