Richard Müller

Private Collection, Germany

Sale: Karl und Faber, Munich, 5 December 2018, lot 679

Total gallery cost: $28,000

Corinna Wodarz, Symbol und Eros: Die Bildwelten Richard Müllers (1874-1954) mit dem Katalog des Gesamtwerks, Göttingen, 2002, possibly the “Büssender Mönch,” p. 718 of “Werkverzeichnis” disk, no. M0000.67.   

Richard Müller had a long career as a painter, printmaker, and teacher in Germany from the late 19th-century until his death in East Germany in 1954. He was born the son of a weaver, in the Bohemian city of Tschirnitz (now in Czechoslovakia), and in 1888, at age 14, began to study and work at the Royal Saxon Porcelain Manufactory in Meissen just outside of Dresden. Two years later he was admitted, as one of the youngest students ever, to the Academy of Fine Arts in that city. Here, he not only studied painting and drawing with several academic masters, but also had the good fortune to meet the Symbolist artist Max Klinger who introduced him to the art of etching. Müller developed a meticulous technique which he applied to highly original compositions that often had an erotic or macabre sensibility. This modern icon of prayer, featuring a cloaked figure against a glowing green background, recalls earlier Northern precedents by such artists as Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling, and Hans Holbein. The figure's face is almost fully obscured by a heavy brown hood, focusing attention instead on his hands, clasped in prayer around rosary beads. This tightly cropped composition and the undulating rhythm of the material combine to convey an overwhelming, if not ominous, sense of spiritual devotion.