Seaside villa

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Villa by the Sea, Version II, 1865. Schack Collection, Munich

Villa am Meer is the title of a group of paintings by Arnold Böcklin that were created over a period of 14 years.

history

Impressed by a draft sketch by Böcklin of a villa by the sea (probably the picture that hangs today in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich ), Count Adolf Friedrich von Schack , a sponsor of Böcklin, commissioned the painter for a large-format picture on this subject. Schack wrote:

“... when I visited Rome in 1864, I found Böcklin in a spacious studio, which he had rented together with Louis von Hagn and Franz Lenbach , doing a large landscape for me. This had already delighted me in the sketch. It's a villa on the seashore. "

In his first version, completed in 1864, Böcklin experimented with various materials and techniques. He covered the painting with wax. In doing so, he wanted to achieve an enamel-like gloss of the colors. However, when he accepted the work, Graf Schack found considerable damage to the picture and asked Böcklin to provide a new picture using the tried and tested oil technique. Böcklin completed this second version a year later in 1865.

Frames

Böcklin valued the composition itself very much and produced a total of five variants of this picture. The first two versions are in the Schack Collection in Munich. Another version, which was completed between 1871 and 1874, hangs in the large symbolist room of the “Modern Art” department of the Städelsche Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt am Main . A variant completed in 1877 is in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and a variant completed in 1878 hangs in the Kunstmuseum Winterthur .

Böcklin always shifted accents and moods in his pictures in his repetitions. In Version I of the Villa by the Sea, he already replaced the couple depicted in his draft sketch on the wall with the lonely woman on the beach, looking longingly at the sea. Böcklin indicated that the unknown woman was "probably the last offspring of an old family". The color scheme is also subject to major changes and varies from high-contrast to pale, gloomy moods. In these developments, Böcklin's increasing turning away from the tradition of romantic painting towards more mythological, enigmatic motifs can be seen.

  • Draft sketch from around 1863, Neue Pinakothek, Munich

  • Version I from 1864, Schack Collection, Munich

  • Version from 1871–1874, Städel Museum, Frankfurt a. M.

  • Version from 1877, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

  • Version from 1878, Kunstmuseum Winterthur

Web links

Commons : Villa by the Sea  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Villa by the sea. In: sammlung.pinakothek.de. Bavarian State Painting Collections, accessed on February 15, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Villa am Meer I. In: sammlung.pinakothek.de. Bavarian State Painting Collections, accessed on February 15, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Villa am Meer II. In: sammlung.pinakothek.de. Bavarian State Painting Collections, accessed on February 15, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Villa by the sea. In: sammlung.staedelmuseum.de. Städel Museum, accessed on February 15, 2020 .
  5. ^ Villa by the sea, around 1877. In: staatsgalerie.de. Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, accessed on February 15, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Collection: Enlightenment, Romanticism and Realism. In: kmw.ch. Kunst Museum Winterthur, accessed on February 15, 2020 (picture no.6).