"SECOND GENTLEMAN: How divinely the figure is chosen, it is not merely a device to show the height of the other objects, as in the work of the common run of painters. He is the subject itself, he is the picture; and as he seems to dream himself into this setting, as if into a sad mirror of his isolation, so the ship-less, enclosing sea, which binds him like a vow,"
January 1, 1970
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Caspar_David_Friedrich