Franz von Stuck

With Albert Ritthaler (1953-2921), Munich and Diessen, circa 1986;

with Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval, Paris;

Private collection

The fin de siècle symbolist artist Franz von Stuck trained at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich between 1878 to 1881, followed by studies at the Munich Akademie, where he was taught by Wilhelm Lindenschmit and Ferdinand Löfftz. Aside form sculpture, von Stuck was renowned as a talented painter and draughtsman. During the 1880s he became a leading figure of the avant-garde movement in Munich, as a co-founded the Munich Secession. From 1893 he became a teacher at the Munich Akademie, as well as a member of the state commission who was trusted with buying contemporary works at Munich exhibitions.

Von Stuck’s work was largely inspired by literature of Sigmund Freud, mythology, and the concept of the femme fatale. The present bronze demonstrates the Nymph sitting proudly on the shoulders of a ferocious Faun and holding onto his horns, evoking this sense of the independent and predatory woman. The theme of the Faun und Nixe was the subject for many of his paintings, demonstrating his fascination with the relationship between the two characters. The composition of the bronze parallels his painting of Faun und Nixe dated 1918, in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Another cast of the present model with a near identical patina is in the Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (inv. no. P 96 1-1).

RELATED LITERATURE

D. J. von Bierbaum, Stuck, 1908, Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1908