Mourners in Stone - Graveyard Sculpture

When wandering through cemeteries in Germany or Austria that date back to the 19th and early 20th century, one cannot fail to observe that most of the figurative sculptures are anonymous mourning women or equally sad looking (guardian) angels who look decidedly female as well.

These mourning women, human or angelic, are of course personifications of Sorrow or Grief and in consequence to the iconographic tradition of personifications or allegories such as Spes (Hope), Fortitudo (Courage) etc., they are also portrayed as women.

But then, I think, there might be another and much older tradition to which the gender of the sculpted mourners also alludes: it is the tradition of the mourning women who bewailed the deceased in the ceremonial rites. While in Germany these rites are no longer practiced, and haven't for quite a few centuries, the concept of the lamenting women is still very much present in our cultural memory.

The mourning women bemoan the dead in place of the remaining family and - at the same time, and cast in iron and sculptued in stone - remember the dead throughout all time. The sculptures are thusly memory binding monuments and, simultaneously, ritual devices that support the remaining family members in their grief.

There is, sadly, no proof for this thesis, I just think that it is a tempting and fascinating aspect of 19th century grave-sculpture. Just a few (of my) photos, taken from sculptures at the Munich Old Southern Cemetery, and the Vienna Central Cemetery shall illustrate this idea:

Disney's European Influences

In 2006, Bruno Girveau curated an exhibition about Disney's European influences, that is now shown in the Hypo-Kunsthalle in Munich.
The idea to trace the European influences which helped Disney to craft his special "world" and imagery is certainly a thrilling endeavour, and to see so many Disney originals, cel-sets, storyboards, sketches, figurines, etc. , even short movie clips, is equally interesting and insightful in the making of-process.
With his adaptations of fairy tales and children's stories that had been illustrated numerous times before, Disney's films had to inevitably position themselves in the corresponding visual traditions such as every other artist who wants to illustrate - for example - Cinderella. For witches and fairies, dragons and knights, etc., there is an established iconography in art history to be found that every illustrator has to consider: even if he decides to break with every tradition.
That's true for Disney as well, even more so, considering, that Disney brought from his travels to Europe numerous books (mostly of the 19th and early 20th century) illustrated by Gustave Doré, Grandville, Rabier, Wilhelm Busch, Hermann Vogel, Arthur Rackham, Ludwig Richter and many others, and added them to the library of his studios: as means of inspiration for his artists. In the early years he had also some illustrators on his payroll that had already been acclaimed illustrators in their home-countries: Kay Nielsen and Gustaf Tenggren, for example. And then, of course, there is the whole "visual context" aspect: paintings and schulptures, even early films, that inspired Disney's visual and narrative.
But, and there are many buts to follow, there is not only the European influence! To single the American influence out, to ignore the Golden Age of American illustration with Wyeth, Parrish etc., and the American film history (!) results in a completely one-sided and lastly false picture. At least the French/English exhibition catalogue (published by Prestel) mentions the equally important American influences. The German exhibition shows only European examples, only Murnau and Lang films, and then paintings and sculptures from European artists mostly of the 19th and early 20th century that are supposed to illustrate the art historian context for different aspects of the Disney films. For example Stuck's and Böcklin's pans and fauns as inspiration for Fantasia, or Anster Fitzgeralds A Midsummer Night's Dream for Tinkerbell... And, sorry, but these paintings and sculptures seem so randomly selected that one can only understand the visitor who asks: what's with all the old paintings? - They are just not well enough selected to work as examples for something as complex as the Victorian fairy painting, or the German Romantic movement with C. D. Friedrich and Carus.
Even more problematic is that some of the exhibited illustrated books of Doré, Richter, etc., were from the Disney library, but others were not. Sorry, but you cannot show a random Ludwig Richter book and say it was an inspiration without giving the exact proof: in this case at least the proof that Disney had purchased this book, and not another, and (the book being property of the Studios library) was actually accessible for the Disney artists. That's the minimum of a scientific approach I would have expected: a library catalogue would have been even better.
So, even though I am quite convinced that the curators were working hard to accomplish this exhibition, the main goal of the exhibition - to show Disney's European influences - was only partially achieved: there were the Disney works and then there were the European artifacts that seemed more like a random associative conglomerate of European art than a true "search for traces" of influences.

Clarkson Stanfield - "Staging" Landscape

In 19th century Europe landscape painting was highly en vogue, and travelling through Europe - especially to Italy - was seen as substantial to the education of every artist who strived for a successful career. Soon, other European countries and landscapes were added to the "must see"-list of every educated traveller, and with each of these countries and landscapes there were certain view points connected: The touristic "discovery" of the Rhine coincided with the "discovery" of the medieval castles and ruins, and so ruins of medieval castles are often part of paintings that depict scenes near the river Rhine.
































Most of the travelling artists did not paint every motif they saw, but selected motifs that corresponded to the contemporary landscape concepts of the picturesque and the sublime. They thusly helped to cement certain stereotypes that are still present in our modern-day perception of these landscapes. And even back then, the eye of the travelling observer was thusly schooled, was trained to see nature as a landscape composed after certain standards. The rich bourgeoisie saw Italy as modelled after Lorrain's and Poussin's landscape paintings.
The tourist who wanted to be reminded of the "highlights" of his travels when he was back home became the new customer for the travelling artist. To him the arist sold his pictures on site or back home. This market was exploited rather quickly by publishers who provided the interested buyer with albums and illustrated books.

In this context, Clarkson Frederick Stanfield (Dec 3, 1793 – May 18, 1867), an acclaimed English marine painter, was sent by his publisher to continental Europe to draw landscape motifs of the Moselle, the Rhine and other popular regions, that were later to be published in different albums. His "Sketches on the Moselle, the Rhine and the Meuse" were published in 1838 by Hodgson & Graves in London. They show a landscape that is highly "inszeniert": the landscape is orchestrated to a picturesque vision of an idyllic country. Influenced by the Dutch landscape paintings and stage scenery the artist, Stanfield, who worked for different theatres throughout his career, created a vision of the Rhine regions that is hardly realistic but all the more poetic. He "dramatized" the landscape and made it to a fairy tale.

Consequently, the landscapes Victor Paul Mohn (1842-1911), a German landscape painter, drew for his fairy tale illustrations are not too different from Stanfield's landscapes:















The 19th century perception of landscape tended to idealize in a way that let fiction and reality blur together. No wonder that the late 20th century started to discuss the complexities of landscape perception.

Karl Mühlmeister

Karl Mühlmeister was certainly one of the most productive and talented illustrators of children's literature in Germany in the early 20th century. There are designs and watercolours to fairy tales, sagas, and adventure stories such as The Leatherstocking Tales by James Fenimore Cooper, or other children's literature like Johanna Spyri's Heidi.
About the artist himself is unfortunately very little known. He was born in Hamburg in 1876, lived and worked in Munich until around 1942 and was a member of the "Süddeutsche Illustratorenbund". Where he studied and who his teachers were, is as unknown as the date of his death. What remains is his work, and especially his watercolours are of an intriguing delicate beauty. I am rather convinced that there might have been an influence by the work of Willy Pogány (1882-1955) whose watercolours show a similar concept of landscape and understanding for colours.
Mühlmeister's luminously coloured landscapes conjure up the atmosphere of the whole picture, they are "Stimmungslandschaften" in which the protagonists act, the stories take place. Even though, the depicted persons are often rather small in contrast to their surroundings, they are not for accessory purpose only (as known from the landscape painting tradition) but are as important as the landscape itself: they form a unified whole that gives insight into the magical-fictive world of the illustrated story.

Fairy Tales: Mohr, Herbert and Lotte: Von Prinzessinnen und Königsöhnen. Leipzig: Feuer, ca. 1920.





Arabian Nights: Die schönsten Märchen aus 1001 Nacht. Stuttgart: Thienemann, ca. 1925.





The Leatherstocking Tales: Cooper, James Fenimore: Der Lederstrumpf. Reutlingen: Enßlin & Laiblin, ca. 1920.



Grimms' Fairy Tales: Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm: Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Reutlingen: Enßlin & Laiblin, 1927.

Book Art: designing end papers

At the turn of the 20th century artists tried to reform the making of books. Books shouldn't only be printed on good paper, with the right type and illustrations fitting to the text, but also with an according book cover and beautiful end papers. This over all development in the book arts is mostly attributed to the Art Nouveau, but, on closer look, interest in the book as a "Gesamtkunstwerk" started much earlier and is to be found for example in the editions de luxe that were published in the "epoch" of Historism.
True is, that the specific design of end papers increased during the Art Nouveau, but even then it was not a common feature. Through my researches on illustrated fairy tales and sagas, that are often categorized as children's literature (which is only half true), end papers were rarely designed at all. Nonetheless there are a few examples of not only decoratively patterned endpapers but such that are illustrated with motifs that fit to the contents of the book.
Intent and approach differ from end paper to end paper and range from a rather decorative, to motifs that create a certain atmosphere according to the text, or belong to the telling of the story.

In 1921, Maximilian Liebenwein designed the end paper for an edition of Gottfried Kellers Spiegel, das Kätzchen (Zürich / Leipzig / Wien: Amalthea, 1921), the story of a cat with a repeating pattern of cats moving over rose garlands. The topic of the book is thus mirrored and transformed into a decorative pattern.



The same can be said for Gertrud Caspari's fairy tale figurines (Mein Märchen-Bilderbuch von Gertrud Caspari. Leipzig: Alfred Hahn, [1921]): showing central standard characters of the fairy tales the book contains, such as the king and queen and the old witch.



On the contrary, Willy Planck (it's not completely sure, that he designed the end paper, sometimes different artists were commissioned to do this, especially when the end papers were needed for later editions) designed a dark wood:



The books title Ins Zauberland (Into Wonderland, Sttutgart: Loewe, 1913) alludes to the content of the book: fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, including Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood and other fairy tales in which the forest - dark, mysterious, dangerous - plays a significant role. By picturing an equally dark, mysterious and dangerous wood, the end paper creates a certain atmosphere that introduces the reader to the fairy wood.
This can be compared to the end paper of Wilhelm Roegge, designed for a collection of German folk and hero tales (Deutsche Volks- und Heldensagen. Stuttgart: Levy & Müller, ca. 1910), such as Barbarossa and Roland. The end paper depicts a medieval landscape: mountains, castles, and a river zig-zagging through the country. Rhine-Romantic is activated here, putting the reader into the right mind for the saga-material.



Anne Anderson's end paper (Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten und andere Märchen von Brüder Grimm. Leipzig: A. Anton & Co., [1930].) takes the possibilities of the end paper even further: she shows a fairy tale scene, that - though it has nothing to do with the Grimm fairy tales, but illustrates the story of the magical horse from the Arabian Nights - indicates clearly that the book contains a collection of fairy tales.



Walter Crane's Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves from 1904 actually shows a scene from the fairy tale contained in the book: or two, to be more precise, the opening of the secret hide-out of the thieves and a long caravan transporting treasures through the desert.



Ruth and Martin Koser-Michaels end paper (Zwei Märchen der Brüder Grimm. Nürnberg: Seebaldus, 1948) do the same: the narrative of the illustrations is continued - or even commenced - in the end papers. Here, the boy from the The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was sets out for his search. To his left, there is the gallows where he stayed overnight, and at the end of the road, there is the haunted castle with the giant ghost with the white hair waiting and watching.

Considered the many possibilities the end papers presented the artists with, it is a shame, that end papers were (and still are) only rarely illustrated or specially designed.

Marie Hohneck, illustrator

Puss in Boots, 1905

At the turn of the 20th century, women illustrators, especially for children books, became more common. Be it Kate Greenaway, Rie Cramer, Anne Anderson, Marie Hohneck, Norbertine Breßlern-Roth, etc. more and more women found a job as illustrators.
The academic training still was problematic and not equal for female and male students, and in most cases illustrating alone couldn't provide the livelihood. But nonetheless there were woman artists that became as popular as their male colleagues. Marie Hohneck certainly was one of them. Today mostly forgotten, she trained under Wilhelm Claudius, lived in Dresden and worked between 1885 and 1915.
Her popularity is shown very clearly by a simple fact: the fairy tale picture books she illustrated by order of the Stuttgart publisher Weise in 1905 were published with the serial title: "Hohnecks Märchenbilderbuch". To include the artist's name in the title of the publication was a rare practice at the time. It meant, that the name of the artist was popular enough to promote the book and ensure its saleability.
Hohneck's fairy tale illustrations strike a balance between conventional and modern. The chosen scenes are for example very traditional, as is the way Hohneck orchestrates the different scenes. Whereas the influence of the "Jugendstil" is shown in the lineament of the drawings, or the costumes of the heroines.


Little Red Riding Hood, 1905


Sleeping Beauty, 1905


Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1905.


Cinderella, 1905

Illustrations from:
Goldenes Märchenbuch. Eine Sammlung der Beliebtesten Märchen mit 96 farbigen Illustrationen von Maria Hohneck. Stuttgart: Weise, [1905].
Collective edition of twelfve picture-books to single fairy tales.

Fernande Biegler, illustrations for fairy tales

Unfortunately, there is little known about the artist Fernande Biegler, besides that she worked from ca. 1901 to 1929. Among her most popular works are two fairy-tale picture books, called:

1. Märchengarten. Ein Kinderbuch mit Bildern von Fernande Biegler. Leipzig: Anton, 1921.
2. Königs-Märchen. Märchen der Brüder Grimm mit Bildern und Einleitung von Fernande Biegler. Leipzig: Deutsche Jugend, 1922.

In bright colours these picture books present a strangely arificial fairy-land. Princesses and princes are nearly caricatural in their superficial poses, colourful make-up and delicate gestures.
Looking at them the influence of art déco is strongly visible. Especially fashion figurines seem to have inspired the artist, and helped her to create a other-worldly fairy-land that is one of a kind.

Take a look at some more of her illustrations:


Andersen's The Swineherd, 1921


Brother Grimms' King Thrushbeard, 1921


Brother Grimms' Sleeping Beauty, 1922