ARNOLD BÖCKLIN

(1827 - 1901)

Arnold Böcklin was born in Basel, Switzerland in

1827 to Christian Frederick Böcklin and Ursula Lippe,
named after a character from Friedrich Schiller's 1804 play
William Tell. Both of Böcklin's parents were from
Northern Switzerland, and his father was a silk trader, an
itinerant occupation which perhaps influenced Böcklin's
later interest in travel. Böcklin left Switzerland at an early
age, studying painting at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art
from 1845 to 1847 under the tutelage of the landscape
painter Johann Wilhelm Schirmer. Böcklin also studied
with the Romantic painter Carl Friedrich Lessing, and was introduced to the work
of the Nazarene movement.
At this time he painted scenes of the Swiss Alps, using light effects and
dramatic views subjectively to project emotional moods into the landscape. In
1848 this romantic introspection gave way to plein air (open-air) objectivity after
he was influenced by Camille Corot, Eugène Delacroix, and the painters of the
Barbizon school while on a trip to Paris. But after the February and June
revolutions Böcklin returned to Basel with a lasting hatred and disgust for
contemporary France, and he resumed painting gloomy mountain scenes.
In 1850 Böcklin found his mecca in Rome, and immediately his paintings
were flooded by the warm Italian sunlight. He populated the lush southern
vegetation, the bright light of the Roman Campagna, and the ancient ruins with
lonely shepherds, cavorting nymphs, and lusty centaurs. These mythological
figures rather than the landscapes became Böcklin's primary concern, and he used
such themes as Pan Pursuing Syrinx (1857) to express the polarities of life: warm
sunshine contrasts with cool, moist shade, and the brightness of woman's
spirituality contrasts with man's dark sensuality.
Böcklin's experiences in Rome were an important catalyst for his evolution
as an artist. Exploring the ancient ruins of the city, and immersed in the religious
iconography of Renaissance Art and the sensuousness of the Baroque, Böcklin
moved away from the Realist idiom of his youth. Following the death of his first
fiancée, and an unsuccessful marriage proposal, in 1853 Böcklin also met and
married Angela Pascucci, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a Papal Guard.
Angela was his life-partner and muse, inspiring many of Böcklin's female nudes.
Though the marriage was loving, his parents were not particularly supportive of his
choice, and Angela's Catholic family were openly hostile because of Böcklin's
Protestant heritage. The couple were unable to settle in Rome until 1862, after the
death of one of Angela's aunts, Böcklin's staunchest adversary. This, combined
with the fact that Angela gave birth to fourteen children, five of whom died in
childhood, along with Böcklin's persistent ill health - the artist almost died of
Typhus in 1859 - made the marriage emotionally fraught at times.
 When Böcklin returned to Basel with his Italian wife, he completed the
painting which brought him fame when the king of Bavaria purchased it in 1858:
Pan among the Reeds, a depiction of the Greek phallic god with whom the artist
identified. He taught at the Academy of Art in Weimar from 1860 to 1862, when
he returned to Rome. Called to Basel in 1866, he painted the frescoes and modeled
the grotesque masks for the facade of the Basel Museum.
Böcklin resided in Florence from 1874 until 1885, and this was his most
active period. He continued to explore the male-female antithesis and painted
religious scenes, allegories of Nature's powers, and moody studies of man's fate.
He ceased working with oils and began experimenting with tempera and other
media to obtain a pictorial surface free of brushstrokes.
Arnold Böcklin spent the next 7 years mostly in Switzerland, with
occasional trips to Italy; he devoted much of his energy to designing an airplane.
Following a stroke in 1892, he returned to Italy, bought a villa in Fiesole, and lived
there until the end of his life. Many of his late works depict nightmares of war,
plague, and death.
Böcklin exercised an influence on Surrealist painters like Max Ernst and
Salvador Dalí, and on Giorgio de Chirico. Böcklin's paintings, especially The Isle
of the Dead, inspired several late-Romantic composers. Sergei Rachmaninoff and
Heinrich Schülz-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 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.
From the lively chromaticism of Böcklin’s works spring undeniable musical
qualities. Böcklin himself was interested in music and his ear was so fine that it
allowed him to repeat a melody even after hearing it only once: he also enjoyed
playing the transverse flute, the drum and the harmonium.
One more thing is left to say about his artistic fame in early 20th century.
Aside from his works' presence in various works of arts, there is also a typeface
named after him, which is very rare for any artist. Otto Weisert designed an Art
Nouveau typeface in 1904 and named it “Arnold Böcklin” in his honor.
After enjoying the fame in his time, Arnold Böcklin died on 16th January,
1901 and now probably is living his afterlife on the Isle of the Dead with peace.

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 Important Art by Arnold Böcklin

1872
Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle
Oil on canvas, - Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

In this early, idiosyncratic self-portrait, the artist engages the viewer's gaze
almost awkwardly, pausing from his work as if half-sensing the animated skeleton
playing the violin behind his left shoulder. The painting demonstrates the gothic
humor that would become synonymous with Böcklin's oeuvre, while also
suggesting some unexpected creative sources, perhaps especially the Realist
painting of mid-nineteenth-century France.

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 1873
Battle of the Centaurs,
Oil on canvas Oil on canvas - Kunstmuseum, Basel

Böcklin completed this painting in Munich, where he was based for a time in the
early 1870s, working partly in collaboration with his friend, the society painter Franz von
Lenbach.
The work is an explicit homage to Michelangelo's unfinished 1492 marble relief
Battle of the Centaurs, but adapts the style of the piece in various ways, responding to
various subsequent artistic genres. This is one of many works created by Böcklin which
rework the classical mythical tropes of Renaissance Art.
Battle of the Centaurs was wildly popular, selling for 6,750 francs in 1876. It was
also widely exhibited, and much loved by the German public.

1883
Isle of the Dead
Oil on panel - Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

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 Arnold Böcklin painted five versions of Isle of the Dead between 1880 and 1886.
This, the third of them, was created for the art dealer Fritz Gurlitt, who also coined the
title for the sequence. Executed in a Romantic style reminiscent of both Symbolist and
Pre-Raphaelite painting, it shows two figures, an oarsman and a woman dressed in white,
approaching an island in a small rowing boat. The shape at the front of the boat is
generally understood to be a coffin, while the island itself is dominated by a grove of
cypress trees, with a number of crypt doorways cut into the rock. Isle of the Dead was
painted in Florence, and one source for the image was the English Cemetery in that city,
located close to where Böcklin buried one of his many children who died in infancy.
Like Battle of the Centaurs, this painting achieved enormous fame in late-
nineteenth-century Germany, finding its way into many bourgeois living rooms, and also
inspiring the late-Romantic composer Sergei Rachmaninoff's 1908 work Isle of the Dead.

1883
Playing in the Waves
Oil on canvas - Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Another painting which had achieved great fame by the time of Böcklin's death, Playing
in the Waves shows the artist's irreverent approach to his classical sources. The figures in the
waves seem to be modelled on Triton, the sea-god and merman of Greek mythology, but there is
no mythical base for the scene depicted. Instead, the painting recalls an incident witnessed by
Böcklin during a holiday on the Italian coast, when his friend, the zoologist Anton Dohrn,
surprised a group of women bathers, approaching them underwater and suddenly resurfacing. It
is even said that the face of the Triton, whose salacious intentions seem clear, is based on
Dohrn's.
Despite this seaside-postcard take on Greek mythology, the image is not simply frivolous.
The color-palette is dark and melancholic, and the fear on the woman's face seems real enough.
The viewer is thus confronted with a strange mixture of sensual, frightful, and humorous energy.
The comic-grotesque quality of the painting was noted by many critics during the late nineteenth
century, including Cornelius Gurlitt, who expressed the enthusiasm of the German public in
general in calling Playing in the Waves "one of the greatest achievements of our century".

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 1883
Odysseus and Kalypso
Oil on panel - Kunstmuseum, Basel
A large part of Böcklin's oeuvre is made up of seascapes, but in works such as Odysseus
and Kalypso, Böcklin presents us with a more mournful, enigmatic image. In Böcklin's
representation of the story, Calypso plays her lyre in the foreground, gazing anxiously up at
Odysseus, who seems to be staring out to see.

1896
Diana's Hunt
Oil on canvas - Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Throughout his career, Böcklin returned again and again to mythological subjects. The
inspiration for this work is an episode from the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses, when,
during the course of a hunt, the hero Actaeon becomes lost, surprising the goddess Diana as she
bathes nude in a pool of water. Outraged, Diana transforms Actaeon into a stag, and he is hunted
down and eaten by his own hounds. Böcklin shows Diana armed with her bow, accompanied by
several hunters and dogs, chasing after an already-wounded stag.
Painted a few years before his death, this work also represents a process of sentimental
recollection for Böcklin, who was commissioned in his hometown of Basel to create a picture of
the same scene, Heroic Landscape (Diana Hunting), in 1858. This late work can be seen as a
homage both to the traditions of Renaissance and Neo-classical painting, and to the city of the
artist's birth.
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