Gabriel Cornelius von Max

Sotheby's, Munich, May 18, 1988, lot 75
Acquired at the above sale by A. Alfred Taubman

Munich, Internationalen Kunstausstellung im königlichen Glaspalast, 1913, no. 2201

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Among the most provocative artists of the late nineteenth century, Gabriel von Max challenged his audience with images of anatomical dissection, young women crucified or being raised from the dead, mystics and seers, and monkeys assuming the roles of art critics, musicians and painters. Despite the fact that many considered his interests and choice of subjects to be somewhat morbid, his talent as a Sensationsmaler was undeniable and he quickly secured elevated stature among his peers in the Munich Art scene as well as a broad European and American audience. As the American artist, author and diplomat Samuel Greene Wheeler Benjamin wrote: “In respect of mental grasp and imagination, combined with technical ability, we should give the first place in the contemporary Munich School to Max and Böcklin” (Contemporary Art in Europe, New York, 1877, p. 128, as quoted in Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, Gabriel von Max, Frye Art Museum, 2011, p.112).

The son of sculptor Josef Max, who died of cholera when Max was only 15, Max had early exposure to art-making which led him to study at the Prague Academy of Arts between 1855 and 1858. Here his academic interests ranged from parapsychology, hypnotism, spiritism, Asiatic philosophy, and various mystical traditions, but he ultimately gravitated towards the natural sciences, prompting his eventual interest in the writings of Charles Darwin, whose On the Origin of the Specises by Means of Natural Selection was published in 1859. Max amassed a large collection of prehistoric ethnological and anthropological finds, and at his residence in Starnberger Lake, where the artist spent his summers, he surrounded himself with a family of monkeys which he painted often and frequently assigned them human interests and characteristics.

As Aleš Filip and Roman Musil note in their essay “’From Christ – to an Orangutan’ Notes on the Thematic Range of the Work of Gabriel von Max”: 

Max did not neglect the aspect of humor in his paintings of monkeys, maybe to satisfy the expectations of the viewing public; however, he employed a great deal of irony, often based on the contradiction between the painting’s title and what was actually depicted. Thus… a picture of Monkeys that have knocked over a vase is called Botaniker (The Botanists)… The ideological message Max sought to convey emphasized the closeness of primates and humans and supported the evolutionist approach to the origin of man… He takes monkeys out of the animal world and transfers them across the imaginary border separating the human and animal worlds. This illustration is further strengthened by his meticulous, naturalist painting style, often employing trompe l’oeil (Birnie Danzker, p. 69-70).

The depiction of monkeys with human attributes is often connected to caricature and the grotesque and served as a comic mirror to their audience. Similar in scale and theme to one of Max’s most famous works, Affen als Kunstrichter (Monkeys as Art Critics) (1889, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen – Neue Pinakothek, fig. 1) the present work is a tour de force.  While Affen als Kunstrichter may present an ironic (and perhaps vengeful) assessment of his audience, Der Atelierbesuch sets the artist’s peers (and profession) in its sights.

Please note that in the print catalogue for this sale, this lot appears as number 219T.