In the first of these two articles looking at landscape paintings in which figures have their back to the viewer, in German Rückenfigur, I showed some examples painted by Caspar David Friedrich and his pupil Carl Gustav Carus.

Carus also developed a fondness for distant views framed by foreground objects, which was to remain for the rest of his career. Barge Trip on the Elbe near Dresden (Morning on the Elbe) from 1827 is an early example of Rückenfiguren taking to the water.

His panel showing Memories of Rome (Raphael and Michelangelo Looking at St. Peter’s) from 1839 is a beautiful invention. Raphael idolised Michelangelo, and the two masters were in Rome together between 1508 and 1512, while the latter was painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. They are alleged to have met in the street, but Michelangelo positively disliked Raphael, and Raphael tried very hard to have Michelangelo taken off the Sistine Chapel project, which was hardly likely to have brought about a meeting such as this.

In 1818, the Danish-Norwegian artist Johan Christian ‘JC’ Dahl arrived in Dresden, where he became a close friend of Caspar David Friedrich, who had just painted his Wanderer above the Sea of Mists, the Rückenfigur that opened yesterday’ article. Although Dahl doesn’t appear to have adopted this from Friedrich, in 1829-30 he taught the Norwegian painter Thomas Fearnley in Dresden, and it was Fearnley who adopted the Rückenfigur in a new role, as the Wanderer.

Fearnley’s finely detailed landscapes use the Wanderer as Rückenfigur to draw the viewer in and make them marvel at seeing what they could not have seen in reality. It’s an effective psychological ploy which adds interest to a view, and enriches the dialogue between the artist and viewer. Fearnley’s 1830 Landscape with a Wanderer is a good example.

Fearnley’s Old Birch Tree at Sognefjord (1839) features two small Rückenfiguren at its centre, and many other absorbing details such as the smoke rising from the chimney of the house on the other side of the small bay.

Tragically, Fearnley died of typhoid at the age of only 39. As German Romantic landscape painting went into decline, the Rückenfigur slipped back into obscurity.

It makes the occasional guest appearance, here in Samuel Palmer’s Christian Descending into the Valley of Humiliation from 1848, showing John Bunyan’s Christian making his solitary way down into a valley, in Pilgrim’s Progress. On the left are buildings with a dominating tower, set amid trees. In the far distance are hills, within which is a brightly lit town. Otherwise the hills are swathed in the indigo clouds of bad weather, which ends above the horizon to the right, where the sky forms a bright line. Christian is clad in the armour and bears the shield and sword given earlier in Bunyan’s book, by the virtues of Discretion, Prudence, Piety and Charity, and shows his back to the viewer.

My next exponent of the Rückenfigur had more exposure to German Romantic painting, and may even have seen some of Friedrich’s examples. Arnold Böcklin’s greatest work, Island (or Isle) of the Dead follows the pattern. Between 1880 and 1886, Böcklin painted a total of five different versions, each showing a similar island, probably based in part on the English Cemetery in Florence, where his own baby daughter had been buried. Each shows the deceased being rowed across to the island, calling on the classical myth of Charon, who rows the dead over the rivers Styx and Acheron to the underworld, and each is a Rückenfigur.

Böcklin painted the first version in 1880 for his patron Alexander Günther. This shows the boat just outside the harbour of a small rocky island lined with mausoleums. The light is remarkable, seemingly a bright twilight, against dark water and sky. However the direction of travel of the boat is ambiguous, as it may actually be moving away from the island and towards the viewer.

While Böcklin was working on that version, the widow of a financier, Marie Berna, visited his studio in Florence, and commissioned a smaller version in memory of her first husband, who had died of diphtheria in 1865. For this, the artist added the standing figure and coffin, which he also added to the first version. At that time, Böcklin had titled the painting Tomb Island.

The third version of Island of the Dead was painted in 1883 for Böcklin’s dealer. The first two versions had encountered criticism. Böcklin accordingly changed the lighting and closed in on his motif, making this version much clearer that the boat was entering the island’s tiny harbour.

Five years before Böcklin painted the first of those, the Rückenfigur was reborn in Paris, among the French Impressionists.

Gustave Caillebotte’s Young Man at His Window from 1875 shows his younger brother René in the role of Rückenfigur as we both look out from the balustraded window of the family apartment on the rue de Miromesnil in Paris.

Five years later, Caillebotte embarked on a series of paintings from the balconies of his apartment, of which the best-known is Man on a Balcony, Boulevard Haussmann (1880). The interior has been replaced by intermediate details: a trough of flowers, the ornate iron balustrade, and a colourful awning. Although others in the series show their figures in profile, here he once again shows us the Rückenfigur.