STUCK, Franz von

Stuck often anticipated or repeated his painted compositions as etchings and continued with his work as an illustrator throughout the decade, from 1896 to 1901, providing drawings for the new Munich art journal “Jugend”.

The picture shows the cover of the art and literary magazine Jugend, issue no. 38, 1897.

As both a founder of the Munich Secession and an influential teacher at the city’s Royal Academy (where his students included Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky), Franz von Stuck was a central figure in Munich’s art world at the turn of the twentieth century. His modern interpretation of the antique in works such as this sculpture brought him particular success.

After the turn of the century, Stuck’s paintings showed much more controlled application of paint, and greater symmetry in composition, as in Pan (1908; Museum Georg Schäfer, Schweinfurt). Strong elements of eroticism and humour are also found in his later works, for example, in various versions of the theme Fighting for a Woman (e.g. 1905; The Hermitage, St. Petersburg) and in the scene of an infant faun’s first music lesson, Dissonance (versions c. 1905-c. 1910; e.g. 1910; Museum Villa Stuck, Munich), a work also typical of this period in its use of bold, glowing colours.

In this picture, Stuck brings together a faun, a hybrid of man and billy goat, and a creature from the sea. The forest spirit caringly carries the water maiden, equipped with flippers, through the knee-deep water. The water is the reason for the piggyback situation, and we see a high-spirited, vital game on the seashore, devised with human models.

Like other successful pictorial inventions, Franz von Stuck took up the motif again much later in a bronze statuette.

Stuck lent visual translation to Henri Bergson’s Pan philosophy. Not only did he design the logo for the magazine Pan, but he demonstrated in his painting his penchant for fabulous creatures, fauns, centaurs, and Sileni.

After the turn of the century, Stuck’s paintings showed a much more controlled application of paint and greater symmetry in composition. Strong elements of eroticism are also found in his later works, for example, in various versions of the theme Fighting for a Woman.

Franz von Stuck married in 1897 the American widow Mary Lindpainter. In 1904, the couple formally adopted a young girl, born from Stuck’s former affair with a woman named Anna Maria Brandmaier. Mary Stuck (1896-1961) was Franz von Stuck’s only child.

During the 1890s, Stuck played an increasingly important role in both the avant-garde and the official side of art life in Munich: in 1892, he was one of the founders of the Munich Secession and in 1895 a member of the new artists’ association Pan, which published the journal of the same name.

The picture shows the front cover of the April-May 1895 issue of the art journal Pan.

This painting’s title refers to Dante Alighieri’s medieval epic of a journey through hell. Although Stuck employed traditional symbols of the underworld - a snake, a demon, and a flaming pit - the dissonant colours and stylized, exaggerated poses are strikingly modern. He designed the complementary frame. Stuck’s imagery was likely inspired by Auguste Rodin’s The Gates of Hell, particularly the figure of The Thinker. When Inferno debuted in an exhibition of contemporary German art at The Met in 1909, critics praised its “sovereign brutality.” The picture bolstered Stuck’s reputation as a visionary artist unafraid to explore the dark side of the psyche.

Eight sketches of single figures for Inferno are documented. They are done in a variety of media and apparently all drawn from live models.

Mythological subjects continued to occupy Stuck throughout his career, the more striking among his works were single figures rather than groups, and scenes of almost hieratic majesty rather than vigorous movement, for example, the distressing vision of a wounded faun in the snow, Lost (1891; Belvedere, Vienna). Stuck’s approach to composition, line and colour, reveals a preference for the decorative rather than the impressionistic; but his figures retain a strong sense of mass, which distinguishes his work from much contemporary painting of a decorative type.

After the turn of the century, Stuck’s paintings showed a much more controlled application of paint, and greater symmetry in composition, as in Pan (1908).

After the turn of the century, Stuck’s paintings showed a much more controlled application of paint, as in Salome (1906).

Salome, the idol of the Decadents, is an example of synaesthesia and often appears as a theme in painting.

Synaesthesia is a condition in which someone experiences things through their senses in an unusual way, for example, by experiencing colour as a sound, or a number as a position in space.

In Art Nouveau, the word “woman” also takes on dangerous undertones, undertones of wicked witches, the man-devouring vamp, the femme fatale, the murderess Judith, of bloodsucking vampires, of sin and the dancing Salome - an endless procession of all symbolizing the fears of the stronger sex.

After the turn of the century, Stuck remained in great demand as a portrait painter, particularly for female sitters. He produced a large number of portraits of himself and his family, often in elaborate costumes.

Franz von Stuck’s self-portrait shows him in his grand studio. Here is an artist who knew his own worth and could persuade the most significant others to that effect, doubtless the key to von Stuck’s success. This self-image stresses the artist’s gentlemanly role: he paints in formal attire, bearing a wing collar, as he gazes in awe at a completed nude of his own creation.

The present version of “Sin” is one of the numerous versions of the theme created between 1891 and 1912 and usually differ only slightly in composition. It is one of Stuck’s success stories that made an immense impression on his contemporaries. The painter designed the frame of the painting, too.

The present version of “Sin” is one of the numerous versions of the theme created between 1891 and 1912 and usually differ only slightly in composition. It is one of Stuck’s success stories that made an immense impression on his contemporaries. The painter designed the frame of the painting, too.

Franz von Stuck combined originality with enormous popularity. He conveyed his own advanced, often explicitly sexual imagery in singularly unthreatening fashion. His oeuvre has a strong sense of plasticity bringing him close to such contemporaries as Bourdelle and Maillol.

Von Stuck devoted many canvases to Sin, which was among his favourite and most profitable themes, and he often provided them with lovingly designed frames. In the present 1893 version, Sin, sister of Eve - or Eve herself - flashes her torso, a suitably phallic serpent slung over the Original Sinner’s shoulder like a fox stole. By 1897, sexual associations with this image were made more overt by having the serpent writhe between Sin’s legs.

Paulina Clarissa Molony (1878-1964), known professionally as Saharet, was an Australian dancer who performed in vaudeville music houses and Broadway productions in the United States as well as in Europe, earning considerable fame and notoriety.

A concern for the matching of art and setting led Stuck to build a large villa for himself in Munich (1897-98), now a museum, for which he provided architectural plans and designs for both decoration and furniture, and in which he installed paintings and sculptural works. The villa’s decoration was a variant of Pompeian style, with dark walls and the use of unusual and sumptuous materials (all in situ).

In 1892 Franz von Stuck was among the founders of the Munich Secession, the first artists’ association in Germany to establish itself as an alternative to the official academy. A follower of Arnold B�cklin, von Stuck made his name through paintings of mythological subjects with distinct erotic subtexts. This drawing is one such variation.

Stuck’s later paintings, though largely repetitive in their themes and lacking in formal invention, include images that are effective and surprising, such as the portraits from 1913 of the actress Tille Durieux as Circe (e.g. in Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin).

Stuck claimed that his first attempt at painting in oils was the picture Wild Hunt (c. 1888; Lenbachhaus, Munich), a frenzied treatment of a mythological theme in the manner of Arnold B�cklin. Mythological subjects continued to occupy Stuck throughout his career, although the more striking among his works were single figures rather than groups, and scenes of almost hieratic majesty rather than vigorous movement.

As both a founder of the Munich Secession and an influential teacher at the city’s Royal Academy (where his students included Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky), Franz von Stuck was a central figure in Munich’s art world at the turn of the twentieth century. His modern interpretation of the antique in works such as this painting brought him particular success.

Wounded Amazon depicts a battle between Amazons and centaurs; the particular subject is not found in classical mythology but is of the artist’s own invention. Though he was clearly influenced by the antiquities in Munich’s Glyptothek museum, Stuck based the painting on photographic studies of a model posed in his studio. Ever since he had featured the goddess Athena on the poster for the first Munich Secession exhibition in 1893, classical female warriors had appeared in his work as symbols of the new art.

There are two other versions of this painting, and the artist eventually produced three life-sized sculptures of the subject. One was installed outside Villa Stuck, the home he had designed for himself in Munich.

After about 1914, Stuck’s interests turned increasingly to sculpture; as before, he generally produced bronze statuettes of mythological figures, but he also designed larger figures for fountains (unexecuted; designs in Munich, Villa Stuck).