The above is the third version (of five) of Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin's Isle of the Dead. It's dated to 1883 (click on the image for a close up, yo).
Böcklin (1827-1901) was a Symbolist painter and this is his most famous work.
A brilliant painter, his work became very popular and won over many famous names. That included Vladmir Lenin, Sigmund Freud, and Adolf Hitler (yeah, that one). It also influenced composer Sergei Rachmaninoff and the painter Salvador Dalí.
Let's explore this image, then, as we found it most striking. And we wanted to wax lyrical on its history.
The Symbolism in Arnold Böcklin's Isle of the Dead
Okay, so above is the fifth version of Böcklin's piece, which has a darker hue and the figure in white is hunched over (rather than standing confidently upright).
That one is from 1886. The gothic style is similar to the likes of German Romantic landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1940).
Earlier ones are darker still, seemingly set at night.
It's an oil on wood piece currently located at the Nationalgalerie at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (of Germany, if you couldn't work that out).
How did it come to exist? Well, a patron of Böcklin's, one Marie Berna, was the one to commission the painting. That was in 1880 and for a memorial to her husband.
Each painting depicts a rocky islet surrounded by a vast expanse of water, with the desolation of the setting being rather haunting, non? Especially with the mysterious figure in white the oarsman is whisking towards the location.
If you look closely there's a white object at the front of the small boat, which most observers consider to be a coffin. Böcklin added in that detail (missing from earlier canvases) at the request of Marie Berna.
Further consideration shows there are windows carved into the rock, suggesting this place is a burial ground. All very mysterious, eh? That's not helped by Böcklin, who provided no explanation for why he painted the thing.
However, death is a huge part of his canon as showcased by The Canvas.
Böcklin had a particular weltanschauung (view of life), which was somewhat sinister and clouded in nihilism.
We do know he painted the first three versions at the English Cemetery in Florence, Italy. It was close to the painter's studio (not a bad commute). One of his infant daughters was buried there, with Böcklin losing some eight of his fourteen children.
This is arguably why he was obsessed with death.
The piece is open to interpretation, of course, and you can argue it's a 19th century pizza delivery service with the bloke in white there to hand over delicious foodstuffs to hungry folks on a remote island.
We'd probably be wrong with that take but, hey ho, that's the beauty of artistic interpretations, eh?
Mythology seems to be the real name of the game. In How to Read Arnold Böcklin's Most Famous Mystical Painting, Christopher Jones states:
"When the artist Arnold Böcklin first made the work, he painted it without the coffin or the figure dressed in white. Nor did he give the painting a name. For Böcklin, it was simply a 'painting for dreaming over'.
It was only when a patron, Marie Berna, visited him at his studio in Florence and expressed that the half-finished painting reminded her of her husband's death several years earlier, that the other details arrived. Böcklin began a second version for Berna, which in a letter he referred to as 'die Gräberinsel' ['Island of the Graves']. The boat with the coffin and figure in white were added to both versions following Berna's commission. Finally, it was Böcklin's art dealer Fritz Gurlitt who settled on the title Isle of the Dead.
The symbol of the rowing boat added deeper resonance to the painting, having a long history in myth: in Greek mythology, the souls of the dead were carried across the River Styx to the gates of Hades by the oarsman Charon."
Whilst the Google Arts take on Isle of the Dead explains:
"The motifs — island, water, and castle or vil-la by the sea — are already familiar from many of his earlier works. However, in this case they have been concentrated into a statement of the artist's Weltanschauung. The location is sinister. The viewer's gaze is led up the steps but can penetrate no further into the darkness. The island's strict symmetry, the calm horizontals and verticals, the circular island surrounded by high cliff walls, and the magical lighting create an atmosphere that is both solemn and sublime, evoking a sense of stillness and other-worldliness ...
All-pervasive in the form of photographs and prints, the Isle of the Dead mirrored the feeling of a whole epoch: people identified with it and it became a favorite fin de siècle image."
Fin de siècle (and we had to research what that was) means the moment heading towards the end of the century (particularly the 19th century).
All very good, but what inspirations were at play here? Let's have a gander at the potential thought processes.
The Origins of Isle of the Dead's Location
As Böcklin kept his trap shut about the reasons for his painting, we can't say for sure what inspired his work.
The cemetery setting is easy enough to guess, but what of the islet? We do know the artist spent the autumn of 1879 at Castello Alfonso in Italy. Some suggest this was the main inspiration for him.
However, there are other candidates for the islet location (which we're primarily mentioned so we can show off how fancy they are).
In Corfu there's an islet called Pontikonisi that some art buffs believe is the real day (not least as it has a small chapel on it). Others suggest the eerie volcanic sea stack Strombolicchio, which is off the coast of Italy.
Another candidate is Sveti Đorđe Island (Saint George island) off the coast of Perast in Montenegro. And you'll be able to see why.
There's a lot of beauty in those regions, but death was so commonplace back in the painter's era (especially in for infants) it's easy to see why he merged dramatic landscapes alongside the concept of a demise.
Isle of Life: Balancing Out the Macabre
To note, Böcklin went on to paint the above Isle of Life (1888). You could argue that was to directly oppose Isle of Death and to show his more fun and frivolous side as a painter.
It clearly shows the joys of life.
Naked couples are frolicking with wild abandon (like it's some scene from The Wickerman, if you wanted to be ominous about it. There are also geese and sunshine (the hallmark of any upbeat occasion).
Is it as striking and memorable as Isle of Death? No. Not at all.
For us humans, we guess there's something quite stark and marvellous in the beauty of bleakness. Art is full of it and the stillness of the pieces help us comprehend the end.
Whereas geese and nude people are par for the course, really. Yawn!
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