Something about the sight of a lone figure wandering along a remote road was an irresistable inspiration for countless German artists of the mid-1800s. “The early 19th century in Germany was tough on intellectuals; in the wake of the Napoleonic wars and the Congress of Vienna came a fierce persecution of democratic ideas and those who held them, so that to assert one’s ‘German-ness’ as an artist, one’s allegiance to folk culture and local history, was in some ways a radical act.” Inherent in the theme of the lonely exile was “an inwardness, whispering and pleading to be let out.”