Wild Hunt

[porphyry]

This is by the Symbolist painter Franz von Stuck (around 1890 or so):





Despite the fact that the person I have in mind would have been about 1 year old when this was painted (unless my memory is a few years off and he wasn't born yet), does anyone else instantly recognize the face of the main rider?


Does anyone know where this picture is located now? Does anyone know how it was treated in the period 1933-1945?

The theme of the painting is the Wild Hunt. In Germanic legend Odin and the Valkyries rode through the night sky collecting the souls of the dead to take them to Valhalla. By the time Early Modern priests started asking peasants about the story, it turned into the flight of the witches to the sabbath in the comapny of the Devil, or Holdin, or Dianna, or what ahve you. To cast this character (if any one else sees the one I do) into such a mythic mileu would have been brilliant in a painting executed in 1946, or even 1938--but how on earth did it turn up in the fin de siecle?

Comments

[of-sugar.livejournal.com]

i wish i had any answers at all to the questions you posed -- but all i can say is that i love the work!!

[aubreyweirdsley.livejournal.com]

Hitler?

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Isn't it, though? Uncanny.

[petrusplancius.livejournal.com]

I think it's in the Lenbachhaus in Munich. Remarkably enough it was painted in 1889, the year of Hitler's birth. Hitler was certainly a great admirer of Stuck's paintings, whether he knew this one I don't know. It looks impressive to judge by your illustration. He was a very uneven painter. There is another painting of his on this theme in the Orsay Museum in Paris, but I don't much care for it:

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

See below for further information

[stefanie-bean.livejournal.com]

If Hitler knew the painting, perhaps he modelled his appearance on the central figure (swept-over hair, moustache.)

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

That seems to be an increasing possibility,

see here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_von_Stuck

and further here:

http://www.holocaust-history.org/questions/von-stuck-franz.shtml


with this refernce:

Robert G.L. Waite, _The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler_, Da Capo Press, New York, 1993, pages 66-68. A copy of the painting faces page 161.

[siamhussein.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. Yes, I think this must be the case. Although I would say that it is the clutching hand, the colors, and not necessarily the visage that made me think of horrid Schicklegruber.