Sale: 546 / 19th Century Art, Dec. 09. 2023 in Munich Lot 355


355
Franz von Stuck
Susanna im Bade, 1896.
Oil on panel
Estimate:
€ 100,000 / $ 110,000
Sold:
€ 127,000 / $ 139,700

(incl. surcharge)
Susanna im Bade. 1896.
Oil on panel.
Signed in lower left. Numbered by hand in red and white chalks and in pencil on the reverse of the panel. 60 x 80 cm (23.6 x 31.4 in).

• The earliest and most unique version of the dramatic theme in the oeuvre of the Munich painter prince.
• Extraordinary, narrative composition with daring visual direction, Egyptianizing details and dark, luminous coloring.
• Stuck was appointed professor at the Munich Art Academy a year before the work was created.
• In 2022/23, the Wallraff-Richartz Museum in Cologne dedicated a major exhibition to the motif of Susanna in art.
• Works by the important German Symbolist can be found in international collections such as the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
.

Accompanied by a photo authentication issued by Dr. Heinrich Voss on December 21, 1984 (in copy).

PROVENANCE: Collection of Otto Hermann Claas (1849-1934), Königsberg (until 1916: Cassirer/Helbing, November 21, 1916).
Presumably collection of Theodor Schall, Baden Baden/Berlin (acquired from the above).
Private collection Bavaria (acquired in 1984).

EXHIBITION: Art dealer Fleischmann, Munich 1897.

LITERATURE: Heinrich Voss, Franz von Stuck 1863-1928. Werkkatalog der Gemälde mit einer Einführung in seinen Symbolismus, no. 140/30 (fig.).
Die Kunst für Alle, vol. 13, 1897/98, p. 46.
Otto Julius Bierbaum, Stuck, Bielefeld 1899, p. 100: fig. 107, p. 110.
Fritz von Ostini, Franz von Stuck, in: Die Kunst für Alle, vol. 19, issue 2, October 1903, fig. p. 40.
Fritz von Ostini, Franz von Stuck: Gesamtwerk, Munich 1909, p. 63 (fig.).
Kunstsalon Paul Cassirer, Berlin, Hugo Helbing, Munich, Katalog der Sammlung Otto Herrmann Claass: nebst 10 Bildern aus Berliner Privatbesitz, auction on November 21, 1916, lot 49 (fig.).
Wilhelm Lübke/Friedrich Haak, Die Deutsche Kunst des XIX. Jahrhunderts, Eßlingen 1918, p. 487.
Otto Julius Bierbaum, Stuck, Bielefeld/Leipzig 1924, p. 110 (fig. 85, p. 80).
Galerie Wolfgang Ketterer, 87th auction, November 26, 1984, no. 14111.

Franz von Stuck's oeuvre deals with archetypes and archetypal human behavior in his figures, which are often taken from antiquity but also from narratives found in the Bible. The woman, often closely associated with the element of water, becomes a mermaid or nymph, but she also appears as a combative Amazon or the biblical avenger Judith. Between active and passive roles, however, she always remains an object of desire for the man - just as he is for her. The relationship between the sexes in particular is a constant theme, desire, chasing, teasing, fighting, seducing - Stuck illuminates all of these behaviors in his paintings. The female figures, which are loosely linked to literary models and who always have an eternal and absolute character, are always directed at the pleasure of observing the female body. As a painterly subject, this desire has always been found in depictions of Venus bathing, while its biblical counterpart is the story of Susanna in the bath, which, unlike the ancient veneration of corporeality, is associated with moral demands. Stuck's appropriation of such motifs is particularly interesting, because even though they still represent the classic content, they overwrite it with a liberated approach. They all deal with erotic themes, as here from the Old Testament, and thus postulate quasi-psychological universality, just as early psychology around 1900 attempted to interpret them and remove them from evaluation through conventions. It is not the erotic meaning of these themes that is new, one they have always had, but their removal from the Christian-religious context and their complete adaptation to the contemporary idea of eroticism and its manifestations. The version of the motif presented here is Stuck's first take of the theme. He refers to other great artists of Symbolism such as Arnold Böcklin, who had taken up the motif in 1888 (Susanna im Bade, 1888, Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Oldenburg), followed by scenes of nymphs surprised by a voyeuristic male gaze, he revisited Susanna in versions that put more focus on the female body in its entirety in 1904 and later in 1912/13. This first version, however, has an even more narrative and dramatic character in terms of the scene’s composition and perspective. Another unusual aspect is the Egyptianism, probably fashionable at the turn of the century, which he presents in the decoration of the stone basin in form of depictions of Egyptian deities and hieroglyphs. [KT]



355
Franz von Stuck
Susanna im Bade, 1896.
Oil on panel
Estimate:
€ 100,000 / $ 110,000
Sold:
€ 127,000 / $ 139,700

(incl. surcharge)