Contemplation

Romanticism was an intellectual and artistic movement, which originated in Europe around the end of the 18th Century and peaked between 1800-50.  In simplest terms, Romanticism was an effort to balance individualism and emotion against reverence of nature and therefore God. With respect to landscapes, one of the leading painters in the movement was Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840).  

Some Romantic landscapists would use fierce scenes of natural disasters to evoke an individual's emotions, while others, like Friedrich, preferred the naturalistic approach. As illustrated (quiet literally) below in his masterpiece Wanderer Above a Sea of Mist, he preferred to paint landscapes where the reverent, pious man contemplated nature and his small place in it.  The man below, whose back is to the viewer, stands atop a mountain ruminating on God's creation.  The man, who can travel no further up this mountain, is meant to remind us there is only so much one can achieve in the physical world -- the real challenge lies in the journey to the next.

All art is, obviously, subject to the interpretation of the viewer. This particular interpretation is based on, among other things, the work of one of Friedrich's students, Carl Gustav Carus. In Letters on Landscape Painting, published a few years after the Wanderer was drawn, he wrote "Stand on the peak of a mountain, contemplate the long range of hills ... and all the other glories offered to your view, and what feeling seizes you? It is a quiet prayer, you lose yourself in boundless space, your self disappears, you are nothing. God is everything."

Ruckenfigur

The Rückenfigur, or figure seen from behind, is a subject of painting, graphic art, photography and film. In it, a person is seen from behind in the foreground of the image, contemplating the view before them, and is a means by which the viewer can identify with the image-looking figure and then recreate the space to be conveyed.

Note - I have tried to piece together the eytmology of this word and the best I have come up with is it is German for back figure or man. And, according to a few free online German to English translators the English word for ruckenfigur is ruckenfigur, which sadly, is not in the any of the online references I use.