Unlike portraits, that show a subject or subjects from the front, or in three-quarter view, Rückenfigur paintings show the principal subject from behind.
As an example, take Gustave Caillebotte’s Young Man at his Window of 1876 (see above). The young man is the dominant subject of the painting and we can suppose that he has just risen from his chair and is now looking out at the goings-on in the street. We are less interested in the view than in him and, as the view is from the rear, we have no idea what he is looking at – or what he is thinking. It fires our imagination.
Probably the best-known example of Rückenfigur painting is Caspar David Friedrich’s The Wanderer above a Sea of Mist of ca. 1817/18 (see above) and, again, it makes us think. One way of analysing this painting is to look at its composition and Grave [1] does this:
The rear-view figure is tied into the pictorial structure in a number of different ways. It occupies the central axis of symmetry, it is at its highest point of the triangle of rock in the foreground and marks the meeting point of the two slopes that angle upwards to either side from chest-height on the wanderer.. ..The subtle balance that has been created between the various motifs on the picture plane can be sustained only as long as the existing perspective is respected. Thus the pictorial structure presents no reason why the figure of the wanderer should be regarded as a substitute, occupying a position that is actually intended for the viewer.
Grave [1] also writes:
..He [the wanderer] is clearly an unmistakeable individual. However, if the viewer nevertheless still tries to “enter” the landscape and to take on the role of the wanderer, he will become all the more aware that the rear-view is indispensable. Without it, this mountain landscape would have no centre, and even the few steps that the viewer would take up to the peak would immediately alter the appearance of the rocks partially immersed in the mist.
Why did the Wanderer take the walk? On close examination, we see that he is wearing black walking shoes that are clean and may be polished (see below), his suit appears to be of green velvet, with full-length trousers and he has a walking cane. The impression is of someone out for a stroll and it seems unlikely that he started in the valley and clambered up to take the view from above the mist.
The Wanderer is standing on a rocky crag but we have no idea whether this was adjacent to a path or whether there is a steep fall beyond it, although our imagination tells us that this is possible. A gentle breeze ruffles his hair (see below, upper) while the trees in the mid-distance stand upright, showing no evidence that they are subject to strong winds (see below, lower). Did Friedrich intend us to think about these questions about the Wanderer? Probably not, as our dominating thought is not how he arrived there but what he was thinking. He must be enjoying the sublime the sense of awe at being in the mountains and, if the crag was part of a familiar walk, the mysterious nature of looking down above the mist. That, in itself, carries the metaphor of looking at the world in a different light.
We are left with our own thoughts and this is also true of two other Rückenfigur paintings by Friedrich: Woman in front of the Setting Sun of ca. 1818 (below, upper) and Woman at a Window of 1822 (below, lower).The former is thus contemporary with The Wanderer, but we view the landscape from ground level.
As Grave writes of Woman in front of the Setting Sun [1]:
The woman’s gestures bespeak an act of devotion to nature and the sun in which the painting’s viewer cannot share. Whereas the woman seems to have been granted a direct encounter with nature, the viewer contemplating the painting – in his role [as] a second-order observer – can reflect only on what he sees. The natural phenomenon portrayed in the painting cannot be experienced in the same way by those looking at the painting. The sight of the woman, whose arms seem outstretched in an act of prayer, may awaken religious feelings in the viewer, but he can never completely forget that the rear-view figure is casting him in the role of second-order observer. Once again, the intention in this painting is not to draw us so completely into the landscape that we lose sight of its pictorial mediation.
Whereas The Wanderer leaves us thinking about his sense of wonder in nature, this painting is more of a joyous expression of the beauty that nature gives us – there is, indeed, something of a sense of worship in the glory of the landscape rather than the reflection shown by the Wanderer.
The later Rückenfigur of Woman at a Window is set in a very different environment. We look, as she does, through an open window at the mast of a sailing ship and we are then tempted to ask questions of what she sees. As she is leaning forward, is she speaking with someone on board the ship, or on the quayside? Is she contemplating the journey to be made by the ship, or has it just returned to port? The bare room gives us no clues, although the two bottles on the window shelf may have meaning – but what? We are left with our thoughts and, maybe, she was too?
As with other Rückenfigur paintings of interiors, we are looking “over the shoulder” of the subject and are curious to know what they are thinking, or doing. We can draw a parallel between Woman at a Window and Jacobus Vrel’s Woman at a Window Waving at a Girl of ca. 1650 (see below). In the latter, we see a woman so excited by seeing a little girt outside that she nearly falls off her chair and waves to attract the child’s attention. There is no mystery of interpretation here, and we share in the woman’s enthusiasm and leave it at that. Vrel leaves little to the imagination, whereas Rückenfigur paintings are all about mystery.
[1] Johannes Grave
(2012) Caspar David Friedrich. Prestel, Munich.
