Cleveland Museum of Art

Night, from On Death, Part I, Opus XI (Nacht, Vom Tode, Erster Teil, Opus XI)

Max KlingerLinkedCulture matchlcp-18a1bea5947d

Date

1889

Medium

etching and aquatint

Culture

Germany, late 19th century

Department

Prints

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Object ID

113835

In On Death, Part One, a series of ten etchings, the Symbolist Klinger envisioned the ephemeral nature of life and the suddenness of death, themes that prompted one contemporary critic to call the portfolio a modern "Dance of Death." In Night, the first in the series, a man sits on a bench in an enclosed garden. A moonbeam breaks through the clouds over the sea, and on the path to the right is a lily with a fluttering butterfly. The landscape seems an extension of the figure’s melancholy thoughts, a landscape of the mind.

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