Arnold Böcklin
Encyclopedia
Arnold Böcklin was a Swiss
symbolist
painter
.
, and engaged in the silk
trade. His mother, Ursula Lippe, was a native of the same city. Arnold studied at the Düsseldorf academy
under Schirmer
, and became a friend of Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
. Schirmer, who recognized in him a student of exceptional promise, sent him to Antwerp and Brussels
, where he copied the works of Flemish and Dutch masters. Böcklin then went to Paris
, worked at the Louvre
, and painted several landscapes.
After serving his time in the army, Böcklin set out for Rome in March 1850. At Rome, he married Angela Rosa Lorenza Pascucci in 1853. The sight of the Eternal City was a fresh stimulus to his mind. So, too, was the influence of Italian nature and that of the dead pagan world. These new influences brought allegorical and mythological figures into his compositions. In 1856 he returned to Munich, and remained there four years. He then exhibited the Great Park, one of his earliest works, in which he treated ancient mythology. Of this period, too, are his Nymph and Satyr, Heroic Landscape (Diana Hunting), both of 1858, and Sappho (1859). These works, which were much discussed, together with Lenbach
's recommendation, gained him his appointment as professor at the Weimar academy. He held the office for two years, painting the Venus and Love, a Portrait of Lenbach, and a Saint Catherine.
He was again at Rome from 1862 to 1866, and there gave his fancy and his taste for violent colour free play in his Portrait of Mme Böcklin, and in An Anchorite in the Wilderness (1863), a Roman Tavern, and Villa on the Seashore (1864). He returned to Basel in 1866 to finish his frescoes in the gallery, and to paint, besides several portraits, The Magdalene with Christ (1868), Anacreon's Muse (1869), and A Castle and Warriors (1871). His Portrait of Myself, with Death playing a violin (1873), was painted after his return again to Munich, where he exhibited Battle of the Centaurs, Landscape with Moorish Horsemen and A Farm (1875). From 1876 to 1885 Böcklin was working at Florence
, and painted a Pietà, Ulysses and Calypso, Prometheus, and the Sacred Grove.
From 1886 to 1892 he settled at Zürich. Of this period are the Naiads at Play, A Sea Idyll, and War. After 1892 Böcklin resided at San Domenico, near Florence.
Influenced by Romanticism
his painting is symbolist with mythological subjects often overlapping with the Pre-Raphaelites. His pictures portray mythological, fantastical figures along classical architecture constructions (often revealing an obsession with death) creating a strange, fantasy world.
Böcklin is best known for his five versions of Isle of the Dead
, which partly evokes the English Cemetery, Florence
, close to his studio and where his baby daughter Maria had been buried. An early version of the painting was commissioned by a Madame Berna, a widow who wanted a painting with a dream-like atmosphere.
Clement Greenberg
wrote in 1947 that Böcklin's work "is one of the most consummate expressions of all that was now disliked about the latter half of the nineteenth century."
painters like Max Ernst
and Salvador Dalí
, and on Giorgio de Chirico
.
Otto Weisert designed an Art Nouveau
typeface in 1904 and named it "Arnold Böcklin
" in his honor.
Böcklin's paintings, especially Isle of the Dead, inspired several late-Romantic composers. Sergei Rachmaninoff
(see Isle of the Dead (Rachmaninoff)
) and Heinrich Schulz-Beuthen
both composed symphonic poems after it, and in 1913 Max Reger
composed a set of Four Tone Poems after Böcklin of which the third movement is "The Isle of the Dead" (The others are "The Hermit playing the Violin", "At play in the Waves" and "Bacchanal"). Hans Huber
's second symphony is entitled Böcklin-Sinfonie, after the artist and his paintings.
Rachmaninoff was also inspired by Böcklin's painting Die Heimkehr ("The Homecoming" or "The Return") when writing his Prelude in B minor
, Op. 32, No. 10.
Adolf Hitler
was fond of Böcklin's work, at one time owning 11 of his paintings.
When asked who was his favorite painter, Marcel Duchamp
controversially named Arnold Böcklin as having a major influence on his art. Whether Duchamp was serious in this assertion is still debated.
H. R. Giger
has a picture called Hommage to Boecklin, based upon Isle of the Dead.
Roger Zelazny
titled one of his novels Isle of the Dead
after Böcklin's paintings, and an Ace books edition featured a cover painting by Dean Ellis that was deliberately reminiscent of Böcklin’s work.
's film Isle of the Dead
(1945), Disney composer Leigh Harline
's somber score makes use of another work inspired by Böcklin's painting, Sergei Rachmaninoff's tone poem, Isle of the Dead. Harline borrows themes and copies their orchestration, taking about as much as he can without violating copyright.
In the series finale of Lost
, a driver from Oceanic Airways wears a uniform with the name tag "Bocklin", presumably referencing the artist's Isle of the Dead
.
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
symbolist
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
.
Life and art
He was born at Basel. His father, Christian Frederick Böcklin (b. 1802), was descended from an old family of SchaffhausenSchaffhausen
Schaffhausen is a city in northern Switzerland and the capital of the canton of the same name; it has an estimated population of 34,587 ....
, and engaged in the silk
Silk
Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity...
trade. His mother, Ursula Lippe, was a native of the same city. Arnold studied at the Düsseldorf academy
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, formerly Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, is the Arts Academy of the city of Düsseldorf. It is well known for having produced many famous artists, such as Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Thomas Demand, and Andreas Gursky...
under Schirmer
Johann Wilhelm Schirmer
Johann Wilhelm Schirmer was a German landscape artist from Jülich, within the Prussian Duchy of Jülich.-Biography:...
, and became a friend of Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach was a German philosopher and anthropologist. He was the fourth son of the eminent jurist Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach, brother of mathematician Karl Wilhelm Feuerbach and uncle of painter Anselm Feuerbach...
. Schirmer, who recognized in him a student of exceptional promise, sent him to Antwerp and Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
, where he copied the works of Flemish and Dutch masters. Böcklin then went to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, worked at the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
, and painted several landscapes.
After serving his time in the army, Böcklin set out for Rome in March 1850. At Rome, he married Angela Rosa Lorenza Pascucci in 1853. The sight of the Eternal City was a fresh stimulus to his mind. So, too, was the influence of Italian nature and that of the dead pagan world. These new influences brought allegorical and mythological figures into his compositions. In 1856 he returned to Munich, and remained there four years. He then exhibited the Great Park, one of his earliest works, in which he treated ancient mythology. Of this period, too, are his Nymph and Satyr, Heroic Landscape (Diana Hunting), both of 1858, and Sappho (1859). These works, which were much discussed, together with Lenbach
Franz von Lenbach
Franz von Lenbach was a German painter of Realist style.-Biography:Lenbach was born at Schrobenhausen, in Bavaria. His father was a mason, and the boy was intended to follow his father's trade or be a builder. With this view he was sent to school at Landsberg, and then to the polytechnic at Augsburg...
's recommendation, gained him his appointment as professor at the Weimar academy. He held the office for two years, painting the Venus and Love, a Portrait of Lenbach, and a Saint Catherine.
He was again at Rome from 1862 to 1866, and there gave his fancy and his taste for violent colour free play in his Portrait of Mme Böcklin, and in An Anchorite in the Wilderness (1863), a Roman Tavern, and Villa on the Seashore (1864). He returned to Basel in 1866 to finish his frescoes in the gallery, and to paint, besides several portraits, The Magdalene with Christ (1868), Anacreon's Muse (1869), and A Castle and Warriors (1871). His Portrait of Myself, with Death playing a violin (1873), was painted after his return again to Munich, where he exhibited Battle of the Centaurs, Landscape with Moorish Horsemen and A Farm (1875). From 1876 to 1885 Böcklin was working at Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
, and painted a Pietà, Ulysses and Calypso, Prometheus, and the Sacred Grove.
From 1886 to 1892 he settled at Zürich. Of this period are the Naiads at Play, A Sea Idyll, and War. After 1892 Böcklin resided at San Domenico, near Florence.
Symbolism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
his painting is symbolist with mythological subjects often overlapping with the Pre-Raphaelites. His pictures portray mythological, fantastical figures along classical architecture constructions (often revealing an obsession with death) creating a strange, fantasy world.
Böcklin is best known for his five versions of Isle of the Dead
Isle of the Dead (painting)
Isle of the Dead is the best known painting of Swiss Symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin . Prints of the work were very popular in central Europe in the early 20th century — Vladimir Nabokov observed that they were to be "found in every Berlin home." Freud, Lenin, and Clemenceau all had prints of it...
, which partly evokes the English Cemetery, Florence
English Cemetery, Florence
The English Cemetery is in Piazzale Donatello, Florence, Italy.-History:In 1827 the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church purchased land outside the medieval wall and gate of Porta a' Pinti from Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany for an international and ecumenical cemetery, Russian and Greek Orthodox...
, close to his studio and where his baby daughter Maria had been buried. An early version of the painting was commissioned by a Madame Berna, a widow who wanted a painting with a dream-like atmosphere.
Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg was an American essayist known mainly as an influential visual art critic closely associated with American Modern art of the mid-20th century...
wrote in 1947 that Böcklin's work "is one of the most consummate expressions of all that was now disliked about the latter half of the nineteenth century."
Legacy
Böcklin exercised an influence on SurrealistSurrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
painters like Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
and Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
, and on Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico was a pre-Surrealist and then Surrealist Italian painter born in Volos, Greece, to a Genovese mother and a Sicilian father. He founded the scuola metafisica art movement...
.
Otto Weisert designed an Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
typeface in 1904 and named it "Arnold Böcklin
Arnold Böcklin (typeface)
Arnold Böcklin is a display typeface that was designed in 1904 by Schriftgiesserei Otto Weisert foundry. It was named in memory of Arnold Böcklin, a Swiss symbolist painter who died in 1901.It is probably the best-known Art Nouveau typeface....
" in his honor.
Böcklin's paintings, especially Isle of the Dead, inspired several late-Romantic composers. Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
(see Isle of the Dead (Rachmaninoff)
Isle of the Dead (Rachmaninoff)
Isle of the Dead, Op. 29, is a symphonic poem composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff. Rachmaninoff was inspired by Arnold Böcklin's painting, Isle of the Dead, which he saw in Paris in 1907. He concluded the composition while staying in Dresden in 1908...
) and Heinrich Schulz-Beuthen
Heinrich Schülz-Beuthen
Heinrich Donatien Wilhelm Schulz-Beuthen was a composer of the high Romantic era.-Life:...
both composed symphonic poems after it, and in 1913 Max Reger
Max Reger
Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger was a German composer, conductor, pianist, organist, and academic teacher.-Life:...
composed a set of Four Tone Poems after Böcklin of which the third movement is "The Isle of the Dead" (The others are "The Hermit playing the Violin", "At play in the Waves" and "Bacchanal"). Hans Huber
Hans Huber (composer)
Hans Huber was a composer from Switzerland.He was born in Eppenberg-Wöschnau . The son of an amateur musician, Huber became a chorister and showed an early talent for the piano. In 1870 he entered Leipzig Conservatory...
's second symphony is entitled Böcklin-Sinfonie, after the artist and his paintings.
Rachmaninoff was also inspired by Böcklin's painting Die Heimkehr ("The Homecoming" or "The Return") when writing his Prelude in B minor
Preludes, Op. 32 (Rachmaninoff)
Thirteen Preludes , Op. 32, is a set of thirteen preludes for solo piano, composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1910.-Works in this opus:Opus 32 contains 13 preludes:*No. 1 in C major *No. 2 in B flat minor...
, Op. 32, No. 10.
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
was fond of Böcklin's work, at one time owning 11 of his paintings.
When asked who was his favorite painter, Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
controversially named Arnold Böcklin as having a major influence on his art. Whether Duchamp was serious in this assertion is still debated.
H. R. Giger
H. R. Giger
Hans Rudolf "Ruedi" Giger is a Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor, and set designer. He won an Academy Award for Best Achievement for Visual Effects for his design work on the film Alien.-Early life:...
has a picture called Hommage to Boecklin, based upon Isle of the Dead.
Roger Zelazny
Roger Zelazny
Roger Joseph Zelazny was an American writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels, best known for his The Chronicles of Amber series...
titled one of his novels Isle of the Dead
Isle of the Dead (novel)
Isle of the Dead is a science fiction novel by Roger Zelazny published in 1969. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1969, and won the French Prix Apollo in 1972. The title refers to the several paintings by Swiss-German painter Arnold Böcklin...
after Böcklin's paintings, and an Ace books edition featured a cover painting by Dean Ellis that was deliberately reminiscent of Böcklin’s work.
Cinema and Television
In Mark RobsonMark Robson
Mark Robson was a Canadian-born film editor, film director and producer in Hollywood.-Career:Born in Montreal, Quebec, he moved to the United States at a young age. He studied at the University of California, Los Angeles then found work in the prop department at 20th Century Fox studios...
's film Isle of the Dead
Isle of the Dead (film)
Isle of the Dead is one of producer Val Lewton's horror films made for RKO Radio Pictures. The movie had a script inspired by the painting Isle of the Dead by Arnold Böcklin, which appears behind the title credits, though the film was originally titled "Camilla" during production...
(1945), Disney composer Leigh Harline
Leigh Harline
Leigh Adrian Harline was a film composer.-Career:Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, he worked for various radio stations before joining the Walt Disney studios in 1932 as arranger and scorer...
's somber score makes use of another work inspired by Böcklin's painting, Sergei Rachmaninoff's tone poem, Isle of the Dead. Harline borrows themes and copies their orchestration, taking about as much as he can without violating copyright.
In the series finale of Lost
Lost (TV series)
Lost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
, a driver from Oceanic Airways wears a uniform with the name tag "Bocklin", presumably referencing the artist's Isle of the Dead
Isle of the Dead (painting)
Isle of the Dead is the best known painting of Swiss Symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin . Prints of the work were very popular in central Europe in the early 20th century — Vladimir Nabokov observed that they were to be "found in every Berlin home." Freud, Lenin, and Clemenceau all had prints of it...
.