Salvador gave a true picture of the island of the dead. Böcklin and his "island of the dead"

Arnold Böcklin - famous Swiss artist, graphic sculptor. He is one of the most famous representatives of symbolism of the 19th century. Born 1827 in Basel, Switzerland - died 1901 in San Domenico di Fiesole, Italy. His art contains many amazing works, but one of the most remarkable and even iconic is the painting “Island of the Dead,” which was painted in 1880-1886, and one of the versions of which is currently in St. Petersburg.

It was written by Arnold Böcklin in five versions. All five paintings were painted between 1880 and 1886. This painting represents mythological ideas about death and the place where the souls of dead people go. The painting shows a body of water, which is the symbolic River Styx. In the middle of the river there is an island, which is a concave wall and somewhat resembles an amphitheater. This, in fact, is the island of the dead. There are buildings on the island that look like crypts with windows. Cypress trees also grow here, which are considered symbols of death and are often planted in cemeteries.

A boat is approaching the island. Boat with an oarsman - there is a mythological Charon who transports the dead across the River Styx. Charon is dressed in white matter. Besides him, there is another figure in the boat. The passenger of the boat is the soul of a person who is traveling in the other world. The very plot of the picture, its gloomy atmosphere so impressed many viewers and famous people (Max Ernst, Sergei Rachmaninov and many others) that an interpretation of the picture was created in a variety of forms. The famous painting by Salvador Dali is “The True Image of Arnold Böcklin’s “Isle of the Dead” at the Hour of Evening Prayer.” Sergei Rachmaninov wrote a symphonic poem “Island of the Dead”. The painting is mentioned in the novel “The Twelve Chairs” by Ilf and Petrov, and the novel “Mashenka” by Vladimir Nabokov. Science fiction writer Roger Zelazny, inspired by the work, wrote the novel “Island of the Dead.” It is impossible not to mention the fact that the image of the island is often used in the architecture of cemeteries. Two films were made based on the film: the 1945 American film “Island of the Dead” and the Russian collage film “Island of the Dead.” In addition to all of the above, this island is present in the anime “Black Butler” and the manga “The Extraordinary History of Panorama Island”.

Arnold Böcklin - "Isle of the Dead"

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I thought for a long time whether to write an article about the artist Arnold Böcklin.? The doubts are not because of Böcklin’s paintings, but because he was Hitler’s favorite artist. But nevertheless, his name was well known in Russia.

Böcklin was quoted by Wassily Kandinsky in his treatise “On the Spiritual in Art” (1910). “In painting I love Böcklin most of all,” admitted Leonid Andreev. Valentin Serov wrote from Florence in 1887: “The cypress trees are swaying like Böcklin.”

Böcklin was praised in their reviews by Igor Grabar and Maximilian Voloshin, Alexander Benois and Anatoly Lunacharsky. Sergei Rachmaninov, deeply impressed by the painting, the fifth version of which he saw in Leipzig, wrote the symphonic poem “Island of the Dead” in 1909 (in total, five musical works inspired by this painting were created in Europe in the 1890-1910s ).

Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin was one of the notable masters of the 19th century. A romantic and a symbolist at the same time, he perceived modernity through the prism of the classical heritage.

There was no other artist in European cultural life who at first caused so much misunderstanding and irritation, then was literally deified by everyone, and soon after his death almost instantly consigned to oblivion.

Self-portrait. 1877—1876

A LITTLE ABOUT THE ARTIST

Arnold Böcklin can rightfully be called a European citizen. He was born in 1827 in Switzerland, in Basel , studied painting at the Academy of Arts in Dusseldorf, traveled a lot in his youth. He disliked Paris and spent only a year in it, and settled in Rome for seven years. Here, in 1853, he happily married a seventeen-year-old Italian beauty.

Fame did not come to Böcklin immediately; the opinion of the public, as he frankly admitted, did not bother him much, he did not know how to work to please customers and sometimes quarreled with those people on whom his well-being depended.

Böcklin's paintings, bright and sharp in color, are painted mainly tempera . In his paintings, the artist paints a fictional world, often deliberately mysterious. At first, Böcklin wrote romantic landscapes with mythological figures , then - fantastic scenes with nymphs , sea monsters.

Today we’ll talk about the main film - “ISLE OF THE DEAD”

What’s interesting is that the artist created 5 versions of this painting.

PFIRST OPTION.

The customer of the painting wasphilanthropist Alexander Gunter

The first painting had not yet been completed when Böcklin received an order from the young widow Maria Berna for a “painting for dreams” (“Bild zum Träumen”).

The customer, who may have seen the unfinished first version of “The Island,” became the owner of the second.

It is interesting that the figure in a white shroud standing in a boat and the sarcophagus in front of her were absent in the first and second versions of the painting and were added by the artist a little later.

1883 Old National Gallery, Berlin

Böcklin completed the third version of “The Island” in 1883 at the request of the Berlin collector and publisher Fritz Gurlitt, and in 1884

PHOTO. 1884 Destroyed in Rotterdam during World War II Financial difficulties prompted the artist to create a fourth version of the painting (lost during the Second World War).

1886 Museum of Fine Arts, Leipzig

The artist painted “The Island” for the fifth time in 1886 for the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig.

Taken together, the four versions of “The Island” that have come down to us seem to be parts of a solemn requiem, in which sublime sorrow gives way to deep peace, and time recedes before eternity.

BASIS OF THE PLOT.

The plot of the film is based on the ancient myth that the souls of heroes and favorites of the gods find their final refuge on a secluded island. The island of the dead is washed by the deserted mirror waters of the underground river Acheron, through which the boatman Charon transports the souls of the dead.

Capri. Faraglioni.

Art historians have, of course, wondered which island inspired Böcklin. The sheer light cliffs of the “Island of the Dead” are very reminiscent of the landscapes of the volcanic Pontine Islands and the Faraglioni reefs off the coast of Capri, which Böcklin could see during his trip to Naples.

Ostro San Michele.Venice.

One cannot help but recall the island-cemetery of San Michele near Venice, where the bodies of the deceased are transported in gondolas and where the same dark “mourning cypresses” rise into the sky as in Böcklin’s painting.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PICTURE.

The boat approaches a tiny island, the rocks of which seem to form a natural wall for the interior space, overgrown with dark cypress trees. Between the water and this space, stone blocks form an entrance. Rectangular openings are visible on the inside of the rocks.

There are two people in the boat: the rower who controls it and a figure wrapped in white cloth. In front of the figure stands a long rectangular box, which is usually interpreted as a coffin. The rower was often associated with Charon, and the body of water that the boat crossed with the rivers Styx or Acheron. Interestingly, in Southern Europe, cypress trees are associated with death and are often planted in cemeteries

The melancholy of “The Island” exactly reflected the mood in society that was denoted by the word “decadence” - vague melancholy, gloomy forebodings, greedy interest in the other world, a feeling of weariness from life, rejection of rough earthly reality.

The magical atmosphere of the “Island” attracted avant-garde artists. The pioneer of surrealism in poetry, Guillaume Apollinaire, put “The Island” on a par with the Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa and the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel;

The creator of metaphysical painting, Giorgio de Chirico, counted Böcklin among his teachers, Max Ernst recognized Böcklin’s influence, and Salvador Dali expressed his respect to him in the painting “The True Image of the Island of the Dead by Arnold Bölin at the Hour of Evening Prayer” (1932). Böcklin was also an idol for the Russian intelligentsia

Böcklin and Hitler.

The picture had unexpected fans, one of whom was... Adolf Hitler.

Trying to build the cultural foundation of Nazi ideology, he noted Böcklin as the artist who most deeply expressed “Germanness” and the “Aryan spirit,” as well as the philosopher Nietzsche and the composer Wagner.

In “The Island,” the Fuhrer was obviously impressed by the idea of the chosenness of heroes, “representatives of a superior race,” awarded eternal peace where the souls of the mob have no access.

In 1933, Hitler bought the third version of the painting (in total he owned 16 works by Böcklin), which was first located in his Berghof residence, and from 1940 adorned the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. A photograph taken on November 12, 1940 has survived, in which Hitler and Molotov negotiate against the backdrop of a painting by Böcklin.

GALLERY OF WORKS.

Idyll.

Naiad games.

Pirate attack.

Battle of the Centaurs.

Portrait of Angela Böcklin.

Mary Magdalene mourning Christ 1867

Angelique Guarded by a Dragon 1873

QUESTIONS.

How do you evaluate the artist's work?

What attracted contemporaries to the painting ISLAND OF THE DEAD?

Why was this topic so interesting to people?

Congratulations to the magnificent five, of which only two currently live in Latvia, if I’m not mistaken!

First, a story about the paintings, and then about the place for which the guessing game was conceived. It is better not to look under the cut for particularly impressionable people... By the way, regarding the question of how much we remember about events that took place less than a hundred years ago.

Before giving the answer to the guessing game, I want to show what logical series the photographs proposed at that time formed, what thoughts they were supposed to suggest.

Photos No. 3 and 4 in the guessing post were like this:

Many found out where it is - in Russia, in Vyborg, in Mon Repos Park.
The Ludwigsburg Chapel was built between 1822 and 1830 according to the design of the English architect C.H. Tetama. From that time on, the island turned into the family necropolis of the Nikolai barons and received the name Ludwigstein. Island on the lithograph by J. Jacotte (1840):

The official name of the place is Ludwigstein Island and Ludwigsburg Chapel. Unofficially, the island is called the Island of the Dead:

Now there is no land road to the Vyborg Island of the Dead, which surrounds the necropolis with an additional veil of secrecy:

Paintings No. 6 and 7 in the guessing post are Arnold Böcklin, paintings “Isle of the Dead,” the most famous works of the Swiss painter, graphic artist, and sculptor; one of the outstanding representatives of symbolism in European fine art of the 19th century:

The artist created five (possibly six) versions of the painting on this topic. All of them were painted in Italy over several years and differed from each other in details in composition and color scheme; four have survived to this day, which are now in Basel, New York, Berlin and Leipzig.

“Island of the Dead” is Böcklin’s most famous and mysterious painting, which has become an icon of symbolism. A mysterious island with an entrance resembling a cemetery gate seems to grow out of the dark surface of sea water. The composition of the canvas is strictly thought out: the rhythmic verticals of cypress trees and marble rocks with narrow caves are contrasted with the horizontal of the sea. A boat with a rower and a figure wrapped in white slowly approaches the island.
Perhaps the picture goes back to the ancient tradition described by Nietzsche’s friend, philologist E. Rohde: the favorites of the gods and heroes are buried on the islands, and the masses get the underworld. One thing is certain - “Island of the Dead” is a poetic reflection on the historical course of time, its transience, and the loneliness of man in the world.

The painting shows a boat in which a coffin is installed. Ahead, beyond the River Styx, is a huge gloomy island. Giant elms overhang the boat as it slowly sails toward a small jetty roughly hewn out of a small natural bay. On both sides of the island there are burial crypts carved out of solid rock. Even the lonely figure of Charon standing in the boat looks like a corpse covered with a shroud, and it is she who first of all attracts the viewer’s attention. The placement of the straight figure in the center of the picture inevitably draws the eye to the trees and back again, in a continuous circular motion. A mosaic fragment from this painting has been preserved at the Vvedensky Cemetery (colonnade at the grave of Georg Lyon and Alexandra Ivanovna Rozhnova, 1910s, workshop "Rob.Guidi St. Petersburg"). Once upon a time, a double mosaic also decorated the Smolensk Lutheran Cemetery (the tombstone of Gustav Bayermeister, a member of the German community in St. Petersburg).

At the beginning of the 20th century, the German artist Max Klinger made a famous engraving based on the painting “Isle of the Dead”, which made this plot of Böcklin world famous:

In 1908 S.V. Rachmaninov wrote a symphonic poem for the painting “Island of the Dead” (“Island of the Dead” Op. 39.). Later, still impressed by Böcklin's paintings, he purchased his villa "Senar" in Switzerland only because of its resemblance to the painting. The composer even ordered to blow up the rocks on the shore of the lake in order to further enhance the similarity of the real landscape with Böcklin’s painting. One of the reproductions hung over Lenin's bed in Zurich.

Paintings 8 and 9 are works by Hans Rudi Giger, a Swiss fantasy realist artist best known for his design work for the film Alien. The guessing game included two of his works based on the same painting by Böcklin:

So, the six paintings in the guessing game are called “Island of the Dead,” and it would seem that the Latvian place should also be called that. However...

This logical line was violated by photo No. 5 in that row:

This is also an island, but this time in Minsk. And it's called like this:

It was equipped for the following reason (see paragraph 3):

If the previous photos are just necropolises, then here is a memorial of military glory:

And from here we return to photo No. 2 - a logical sequence led us to the fact that this is an island thematically associated with death and, presumably, military glory:

That’s right - this is the Island of Death on the Daugava River (Western Dvina) in Latvia. Do you notice anything in this fragment?

At maximum magnification, when shooting from the opposite bank of the river, the obelisk on the shore of Death Island becomes visible:

In Latvian the island is called Naaves sala:

Photographs of the obelisk on the island taken in the late 1920s and 1934. In the foreground is the monument to the Unknown Gunner, erected by the scouts in 1930:

You already realized that this obelisk is somehow connected with the First World War. Obelisk to fallen warriors on the Island of Death.
Front line in 1914-1917. Death Island is located at the top of the front line, approximately 20-odd kilometers down the river from Riga:

During the First World War, during the retreat of Russian troops, the so-called. The Iskul bridgehead (from Dole Island to the mouth of the Ogre River) or “Island of Death” became the site of the feat of two companies of the Russian army, which blocked the enemy’s path to the crossing; it was then held for two years, and both sides suffered heavy losses. In those days, the island was actually still a peninsula.

Defense by Russian troops and Latvian riflemen of a fortified area on the left bank of the Daugava opposite Ikskile (“Island of Death”), while the main forces were on its right bank:

Scheme in Latvian. I translate the signatures to it:
- trenches of Russian troops
- trenches of the German army
- barbed wire fence
- temporary bridge
- boat crossing point
- boat crossing point:

The site of the First World War battles is a peninsula with an area of 2 square kilometers - 3.5 km west of the Ikskile railway station. Since March 1916, the 3rd Kurzeme and 2nd Latvian rifle battalions helped Russian units defend this small bridgehead, which the Russian army, when retreating to the right bank of the Daugava in the fall of 1915, retained on the left bank of the river. The fortifications were intensively shelled day and night. Defending units changed almost every three weeks. Shelling of the place in the photo of that time:

Pedestrian bridge from Death Island during its shelling by German artillery in the summer of 1916:

A telephone cable that connected the defenders of the bridgehead with the opposite bank. In the background there is a floating wooden bridge:

Russian soldiers in the left sector of the defense of Death Island in November 1916:

Funeral at the Fraternal Cemetery in Vecpelši of the soldiers of the 3rd Kurzeme Latvian Rifle Battalion who fell in the night battle on July 4-5, 1916 on the Island of Death:

We come to the most important thing, which is why the island got its name. Do you see in the photo below that the soldiers in the trenches are wearing gas masks?

On September 25 (October 8, new style), 1916, when Russian units were in position, German troops carried out a gas attack on the Island of Death, which was the first case of large-scale use of this type of weapon in Latvia during the First World War. About 1,400 soldiers and officers (according to other sources, about 2,000) who did not have gas masks were poisoned. Almost the entire Kamenets infantry regiment located in this place perished, whose fighters suffered a terrible, painful death from poisonous gas.

Latvian riflemen were urgently sent to help. Although they had gas masks, they did not completely protect against poisoning. 120 riflemen from the 2nd Riga battalion, which withstood German attacks on the Island for 8 days, were gassed. Defending this bridgehead, most of the Latvian soldiers fell (both battalions lost 167 people), which is why the riflemen called this place the Island of Death (Nāves sala).

From a school textbook:
In 1916, on the left bank of the Daugava, near Ikskile, Latvian riflemen defended a piece of land called the “Island of Death” for several months. At night, ammunition was delivered across the Daugava by boat, and the wounded and dead were taken back. The Germans constantly fired at the riflemen's trenches with cannons and mortars, and also used chemical warfare gases.
G. Kurlovich, A. Tomashun "History of Latvia", 5th grade. Riga, "Zvaigzne", 1992

In the photo - 240 Russian soldiers from the 173rd Kamenets Infantry Regiment, who died from a German gas attack, shortly before being buried near the Karamursky farm in September 1916:

Photos of the destruction on Death Island:

Particularly bloody battles unfolded in 1916, when Russian troops, in order to ease the position of the French army at Verdun and the Somme, launched an offensive on the Northern Front. On land, the greatest burden fell on the divisions of the 43rd Corps of General V.G. Boldyrev, who defended the Ikskul bridgehead. In a steep bend of the Dvina, opposite Ikshkile, from April to September 1916, on the left bank of the river, Siberian and Latvian riflemen steadfastly held the fortifications in front of the bridge crossing. They were hit with shells and gassed. They fought to the death. The soldiers nicknamed this place: “Island of Death,” and the mass graves of its defenders today remind us of the terrible losses that the Russian army suffered then.

Latvian riflemen took part in defending the bridgehead until October 1916, and Russian troops until July 1917, when, by decision of their superiors, they retreated and surrendered the long-defended bridgehead to the enemy.
Not far from Ikskile, in the middle of a field, there is a large hill - which became the final resting place of the officers and soldiers of this regiment. There is a large group of mass graves, each with 75 or 50 people buried.

On July 27, 1924, the President of the Republic of Latvia, Jānis Čakste, unveiled a monument to the defenders of Death Island (author - architect Eižen Laube). Another source says that this is a monument to the fallen Latvian riflemen (do you understand the difference?):

Actually, the three Latvian stars on the monument speak about this...

As well as the inscriptions about the sons of Latvia who defended the Fatherland:

Monument in September 1937:

After World War II, the monument was damaged and then restored.

Before the construction of the Riga Hydroelectric Power Station reservoir there was a peninsula here, now it is an island that can only be reached by boat. The obelisk is visible to the left of the red dot:

Occasional boat tours also take place in the rest of the island, where trenches, old burial sites and gypsum stone quarries were located. They say that back in the sixties of the 20th century, in its sand dunes it was enough to dig once or twice to collect handfuls of cartridges, rusty bayonets, cartridge belts, helmets from the First World War, rifle bolts... The area around the obelisk was not as overgrown as it is now:

There is a sign to the place on the left bank of the river, but the island can only be reached by boat:

By the way, many are confused by the fact that it is written everywhere that you can only look at the island from Ikskile. So - on this satellite map the number 1 shows the Island of Death, the red dot is the approximate location of the obelisk. Ikskile is number 3 on the map, which clearly shows that the obelisk is not visible from the city. It is visible from the side of number 2 - this is the village of Saulkalne:

And so, having studied the map, we went straight to Saulkalne. To the right of the local kindergarten there is a road to the bank of the Daugava. Actually, here it is, the Island of Death visible on the horizon. If you look closely, you can even see the location of the obelisk:

The same road, looking back from the Daugava:

It would seem, what does Böcklin have to do with the guessing game?

After the incredible success of the film “Island of the Dead” among his contemporaries, no one seemed to doubt the immortality of Böcklin’s work.
Arnold Böcklin's two most famous late paintings - "War" (1896) and "Plague" (1898) - seemed to anticipate the turbulent and dramatic history of the 20th century. The theme of death in them takes on a truly dramatic sound. The illustrations below show two versions of “War”.

Arnold Böcklin. "Dead island"

1880 Oil on canvas. 111 x 115 cm. Kunstmuseum, Basel
1880 Wood, oil. 111 x 115 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
1883 Wood, oil. 80 x 150 cm. State Museums, Berlin
1886 Wood, tempera. 80 x 150 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Leipzig.

Everything in the world should be understood as a mystery.
Giorgio de Chirico

European citizen

Arnold Böcklin can rightfully be called a European citizen. He was born in 1827 in Switzerland, in Basel, studied painting at the Academy of Arts in Dusseldorf, and traveled a lot in his youth. He disliked Paris and spent only a year in it, and settled in Rome for seven years. Here, in 1853, he happily married a seventeen-year-old Italian beauty.

Arnold Böcklin. Self-portrait. 1873

Together with his large family (the Böcklin couple had 14 children, 8 of whom died at an early age), the artist moved many times: from Rome to his native Basel, then to Hanover, to Munich, to Weimar, from there again to Rome, again to Basel , again to Munich, from there to Florence, then to Zurich... He spent the last nine years of his life in Italy and died in 1901 at his villa near Fiesole.

These endless moves had good reasons: in his youth - the desire to see with his own eyes the monuments of classical art of Italy, later - invitations to teaching work, large orders (Böcklin not only painted pictures, but also decorated interiors with frescoes), the need to give children a good education, and finally , last but not least, lack of money.

(Fame did not come to Böcklin immediately; the opinion of the public, as he frankly admitted, did not bother him much; he did not know how to work to please customers and sometimes quarreled with those people on whom his well-being depended.)

Such mobility allowed Böcklin not only to see a lot and make acquaintance with outstanding contemporaries in different countries, but also to synthesize in his work the artistic ideas that were exciting Europe at that time. He was called a symbolist and neoclassicist, the last romantic and herald of surrealism.

In the world of fauns and nymphs

Böcklin began with romantic landscapes. Characteristic signs of romanticism are often found in his mature works: swirling clouds, mysterious shadows and flashes of light, piles of rocks, raging waves, picturesque ruins, lonely villas on deserted shores...

The friendly Mediterranean nature, the southern sun, and most importantly, contact with the classical art of Italy, primarily with the ancient Roman frescoes in Pompeii, suggested new themes to the artist: mythological characters appeared on Böcklin’s canvases. The artist seemed to have opened a window into a blissful country, where the forest god Pan plays his pipe in the reeds, the fairy night showers the peacefully sleeping earth with poppy seeds, Triton blows a sea shell, Nereids splash among the waves, and nymphs frolic in flowering meadows.

In his paintings, Böcklin constantly conducts a dialogue with the heritage of European art, responding to the great predecessors - the masters of the Middle Ages, artists of the Renaissance, Baroque, Classicism - with his own “replicas” to their works. For example, the plot of “Self-Portrait with Death Squealing on a Violin” (1872) goes back to the famous medieval fresco “Dance of Death” in Basel and to the painting by Hans Holbein the Younger.

The artist's later works stylistically belong to the 20th century. In the series “War” (1896-97) and in the painting “Plague” (1898), classicism and balance give way to open expression: mad horses carry an otherworldly army of non-humans over the earth, and a plague descends on a dying city on a winged dragon.

Böcklin clears reality of everything momentary, everyday, concrete. His image is endowed with some kind of magical authenticity and at the same time understatement.

Böcklin's symbolism was not bookish, not theoretical, but felt, natural - he depicted objects and elements in such a way that a certain mysterious elusive essence was felt behind the outer shell.

This mesmerizing skill of Böcklin was fully demonstrated in his main film, “Island of the Dead.”

"Picture for dreams"

Böcklin usually did not give titles to his works, but the name “Island of the Dead” most likely belongs to the artist himself: in April 1880 he wrote from Florence to the customer of the painting, philanthropist Alexander Günther, that “Island of the Dead” (“Die Toteninsel”) would soon will be finished..

The first version of the painting “Island of the Dead”. 1880

The painting had not yet been completed when Böcklin received an order from the young widow Maria Berna for a “picture for dreams” (“Bild zum Träumen”). The customer, who may have seen the unfinished first version of “The Island,” became the owner of the second. It is interesting that the figure in a white shroud standing in a boat and the sarcophagus in front of her were absent in the first and second versions of the painting and were added by the artist a little later.

Second version of the painting "Island of the Dead", 1880

Böcklin completed the third version of “The Island” in 1883 at the request of the Berlin collector and publisher Fritz Gurlitt, and in 1884 financial difficulties prompted the artist to create a fourth version of the painting (lost during the Second World War).

The third version of the painting “Island of the Dead. 1883

The artist painted “The Island” for the fifth time in 1886 for the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig.

Fifth version of the painting "Island of the Dead", 1886

To Böcklin’s credit, he did not copy the painting, but each time developed the plot in a new way, maintaining the basis of the composition, but changing the size, technique, color scheme, lighting and finding new shades of mood - from gloomy hopelessness to enlightened tragedy. Taken together, the four versions of “The Island” that have come down to us seem to be parts of a solemn requiem, in which sublime sorrow gives way to deep peace, and time recedes before eternity.

Faraglioni rocks off the coast of Capri

Mourning cypress trees on the cemetery island of San Michele near Venice

These trees, symbolizing eternal life, are traditionally planted in Italy in cemeteries, monasteries and near churches.

But no matter what island Böcklin was inspired by, he managed to detach himself from nature and convey the main thing - this island with crypts carved into the rocks and a small pier does not belong to earthly life, it is located in another space, inaccessible to living things.

A boat with a carrier, a shrouded figure and a sarcophagus does not disturb the silence of this ghostly world, melancholic and devoid of living breath, but beautiful in its own way.

"Island of the Dead" in the interior of the era

After the famous graphic artist Max Klinger created an etching reproducing the third version of “The Island” in 1855, and the owner of the painting, Fritz Gurlitt, released this etching in a huge edition, “The Island of the Dead” conquered all of Europe.

Max Klinger. Etching based on Böcklin’s painting “Isle of the Dead”

Böcklin font

According to a contemporary, at the turn of the century “there was almost no German family where reproductions of Böcklin’s paintings did not hang.” And not only German. The famous reproduction adorned Sigmund Freud's office in Vienna, and the father of psychoanalysis mentioned Böcklin in his lectures. It hung above the bed in V.I. Lenin’s room in Zurich, as evidenced by an archival photograph (it is unclear whether the etching belonged to the owners of the house or the tenant). In the photograph of the dining room of the outstanding French politician Georges Clemenceau we see the same etching.

In living rooms where seances were held, “Island of the Dead” was quite appropriate. The picture was perceived by contemporaries as a requiem for an entire era, as a farewell to a culture based on humanistic values and retreating under the onslaught of industrialization. The magical atmosphere of the “Island” attracted avant-garde artists. The pioneer of surrealism in poetry, Guillaume Apollinaire, put “The Island” on a par with the Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa and the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel; the creator of metaphysical painting, Giorgio de Chirico, counted Böcklin among his teachers, Max Ernst recognized Böcklin’s influence, and Salvador Dali expressed his respect to him in the painting “Arnold Bölin’s True Image of the Island of the Dead at the Hour of Evening Prayer” (1932).

Salvador Dali. A true depiction of the Isle of the Dead by Arnold Bölin at the hour of evening prayer. 1932

Böcklin was also an idol for the Russian intelligentsia. According to Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, reproductions from Böcklin’s painting “were scattered throughout our province and hung in the rooms of progressive youth.”

Böcklin was, of course, a stranger to Vladimir Mayakovsky: having met the sisters Lilya and Elsa Kagan, he, as Lilya later recalled, “survived from the ‘Island of the Dead’ house.”

But Mayakovsky could not ignore this symbol of the era: “From the wall to the city, the expanding Böcklin // placed the “Island of the Dead” in Moscow,” he wrote in the poem “About This” (1923). In the 1920s Böcklin's popularity was already on the wane. The scoffers Ilf and Petrov did not miss the opportunity to laugh in “The Twelve Chairs” at their recent idol, hanging “The Island” in the room of the fortune teller to whom Gritsatsuev’s widow came: “Above the piano hung a reproduction of Böcklin’s painting “Island of the Dead” in a fantasy dark green polished frame oak, under glass.

One corner of the glass had long since fallen out, and the naked part of the picture was so covered with flies that it completely blended with the frame. It was no longer possible to find out what was going on in this part of the island of the dead.” However, later the picture had unexpected admirers, one of whom was... Adolf Hitler.

Trying to build the cultural foundation of Nazi ideology, he “appointed” Böcklin as the artist who most deeply expressed “Germanness” and the “Aryan spirit,” just as he chose the philosopher Nietzsche and the composer Wagner for the same purpose. In “The Island,” the Fuhrer was obviously impressed by the idea of the chosenness of heroes, “representatives of a superior race,” awarded eternal peace where the souls of the mob have no access.

In this chronicle footage, Hitler and Molotov are negotiating against the backdrop of the Berlin version of “Isle of the Dead”

Of course, there is no reason to really consider Böcklin a herald of the ideology of Nazism, but, nevertheless, the Fuhrer’s high assessment of the painter thoroughly undermined the authority of “Hitler’s favorite artist” in the post-war years.

Böcklin finally went out of fashion, but was not considered a classic. In art history books published in the second half of the 20th century, he was usually given only a few lines, and even then lukewarm ones.

Even in the former popularity of the artist, art critics often saw evidence of the low level of his work. The case in the history of European art is not new and quite understandable: after all, the starting point for the development of painting of the 20th century was the work of the Impressionists - opponents and antagonists of Böcklin.

The coming century rehabilitated the artist: an exhibition dedicated to the centenary of his death was held with triumphant success in 2001-2002. in Basel, Paris and Munich. Respectable catalogs and monograph albums were published, serious articles were written about Böcklin and television films were made. And although the name of Arnold Böcklin remains insufficiently known to today's public, this artist is already returning to us from a long and, it seems, undeserved oblivion.

Marina Agranovskaya

10 May 2014, 18:56

The other day, quite by accident, in the State Hermitage I came across the “Island of the Dead”. Surprised is an understatement. I had the pleasure of directly observing three of the “canonical” five versions of the painting; I did not even suspect the existence of the sixth, which came to the Hermitage from a private collection (few people even suspect about it, and Wikipedia is silent about it).

This “happy meeting” prompted me to create a post.

The name of Arnold Böcklin, a great European symbolist artist, which once thundered throughout the Old World, is now undeservedly forgotten. "Die Toteninsel" ("Island of the Dead") is the main and most famous of his paintings, a kind of icon of symbolism.

The first version of “The Island” was painted by the artist commissioned by philanthropist Alexander Gunther in 1880. The plot of the film is based on an ancient myth that the souls of heroes and favorites of the gods find their final refuge on a secluded island washed by the waters of the Styx (or Acheron). The boatman Charon transports the souls of the dead across the river.

May 1880. Das Kunstmuseum Basel

In 1877, the artist’s seven-month-old daughter Maria Anna died, and the girl was buried in the English Cemetery in Florence. Many researchers of Beklin’s work believe that it was this cemetery that became the prototype of “The Island”.

English Cemetery in Piazza Donatello, Florence

Some note its similarity to the Greek Pontikonisi (the so-called “Mouse Island”). Böcklin visited Corfu, and Pontikonisi could indeed serve as a model for the picture.

Pontikonisi Island (Pantokrator Monastery), Greece

The painting was not yet completed when the artist received an order from the young widow Maria Berna for "Bild zum Träumen" ("picture for dreams"). It is assumed that she saw the unfinished "first island" and ordered a copy of it with minor changes. After the death of Maria Berna, her heirs sold the painting to the Fischer Gallery in Lucerne, and in 1926 it ended up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it remains to this day.

June 1880. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Like the first two versions of the painting, the third was painted in Florence. It was made in 1883 by order of the Berlin collector and publisher Fritz Gurlitt. It is from this that Max Klinger makes an etching, and the Gurlitt publishing house produces excellent quality reproductions in huge editions, which are sold all over the world.

1883. Die Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

So at the beginning of the last century, “The Island” could be found in the interior of every second European apartment. And according to Petrov-Vodkin, reproductions from the painting “were scattered throughout our province and hung in the rooms of progressive youth.”

Max Klinger. Dead island. Etching. 1890.

“Island of the Dead” decorated Sigmund Freud’s office in Vienna and hung above the bed in Lenin’s room in Zurich. Nabokov mentions the reproduction of “The Island” as a standard one for interior design in “Mashenka” and “Despair”; it also appears in the room of the fortune teller to whom Madame Gritsatsueva comes in “The Twelve Chairs” by Ilf and Petrov:

Above the piano hung a reproduction of Böcklin’s painting “Isle of the Dead” in a fancy frame of dark green polished oak, under glass. One corner of the glass had long since fallen out, and the naked part of the picture was so covered with flies that it completely blended with the frame. It was no longer possible to find out what was going on in this part of the island of the dead.

Photograph of Ilyich's Swiss home (Isaac McBride "Barbarous Soviet Russia", 1920) - on the wall above the bed is the same "Island" (The image is small and of poor quality, so take my word for it :))

The third version of the painting is also known for the fact that in 1933 it was acquired by... ta-daam! ... Adolf Hitler, who was a great admirer of Böcklin and owned a total of 16 of his works. A photograph has survived in which Hitler and Molotov are negotiating in front of the painting.
After the war, she moved from the Reich Chancellery to the National Gallery in Berlin, and remains there to this day.

A. Hitler (on the right, with a mustache and without glasses) and V. Molotov (on the left, with a mustache and glasses) on November 12, 1940 in Berlin. If you look closely, you can recognize the “third island” behind the Fuhrer (a white figure in a boat, silhouettes of mountains and the tops of cypress trees against the sky are clearly visible).

In 1884, financial difficulties prompted the artist to create a fourth version of the painting, which was bought by Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza. Unfortunately, during the Second World War the painting was lost; only a black and white photograph of it was preserved:

The artist painted “The Island” for the fifth time in 1886 for the Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts (it is noteworthy that this time the picture was painted not in oil, but in tempera).

1886. Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig

And in 1901, together with his son Carlo, he finished the sixth! version of the painting (the same one that is now in our Hermitage). I finally stopped at six :)
To Beklin’s credit, he did not copy the painting, but each time he developed the plot in a new way, maintaining the basis of the composition, but changing the size, technique, and color scheme.

1901. State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

It is known that the late Beklin had a great influence on the development of surrealism and mystical realism in painting. The pioneer of surrealism in poetry, Guillaume Apollinaire, put “The Island” on a par with the Venus de Milo, Mona Lisa and the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel; the creator of metaphysical painting, Giorgio de Chirico, counted Böcklin among his teachers, Böcklin’s influence was recognized by Max Ernst, and Salvador Dali expressed his respect to him in the painting “The True Image of Arnold Böcklin’s “Island of the Dead” at the Hour of Evening Prayer.”

Salvador Dali. A true depiction of Arnold Böcklin's "Isle of the Dead" at the hour of evening prayer. 1932.

Impressed by a black and white reproduction of a painting seen in Leipzig in 1908, Sergei Rachmaninov wrote a symphonic poem “Island of the Dead,” which he dedicated to Nikolai Struve. Rachmaninov chooses a rather unusual musical time signature for his poem - 5/8 (like the Gregorian Dies Irae) - so someone in it hears human breathing, others hear waves rolling onto the shore, or Charon's rhythmically raking oars. In general, “total immersion” is guaranteed, I recommend it!

Salvador gave a true picture of the island of the dead. Böcklin and his "island of the dead"

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