Isle of the Dead

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The Isle of the Dead

Arnold Böcklin, 1880

Oil on board, 74 × 122 cm

New York City, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Isle of the Dead (or Island of the Dead; Toteninsel in the original German) is one of the best known paintings by Swiss-German artist Arnold Böcklin, as well as a piece of music by Sergei Rachmaninoff, a film by producer Val Lewton, director Mark Robson and a novel by Roger Zelazny and a novel by Emily Rodda in the Deltora Quest 3 series..

1 The painting
2 The music
3 Film
4 Complete list
5 Graphic novel
6 Other Artists
7 The Island of the Dead
8 Trivia
9 External links

[edit] The painting

Böcklin produced several different versions of the painting. All versions depict an oarsman and a standing white-clad figure in a small boat crossing an expanse of dark water towards a rocky island. In the boat is an object usually taken to be a coffin. The white-clad figure is often taken to be Charon, and the water analogous to the Acheron. Böcklin himself provided neither public explanation as to the meaning of the painting nor the title, which was conferred upon it by the art dealer Fritz Gurlitt in 1883.

The Isle of the Dead

Arnold Böcklin, 1880

Oil on canvas, 80 × 150 cm

Leipzig, Museum der bildenden Künste

Adolf Hitler, in particular, was obsessed by the picture (he possessed the Berlin version).

The first version of the painting, which is currently at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, was created in 1880 on a request by Marie Berna, whose husband had recently died. Other versions are now located in collections in Basel, Berlin and Leipzig.

[edit] The music

Sergei Rachmaninoff was inspired by the painting to compose a symphonic poem. He saw the painting in Paris in 1907, and concluded the composition, a classic example of Russian decadence of the beginning of the 20th century, while being in Dresden in 1908.

The music begins by suggesting the sound of the oars of Charon when they meet the waters of the river Styx. The Dies Irae theme, which is recurring in many of Rachmaninoff's works appears in this composition as well.

It is approximately 21 minutes in duration.

[edit] Film

Thousands of pastiches and copies have been created from Böcklin's masterpieces. Not only in painting but in areas such as sculpture, comics, architecture, novels, music, set design and movies. (A complete encyclopedia is in construction online at toteninsel.net).

The Isle of the Dead is one of Val Lewton's horror films made for RKO, the 1945 movie had a script inspired by the paintings, was directed by Mark Robson and starred Boris Karloff. Lewton's other movie: "I walked with a zombie" has the painting hung in the main room of the movie.

Sergei Rachmaninoff's piece of orchestral music inspired by the painting is a symphonic poem written in 1909. He uses a recurring figure in 5/8 time to depict what may be the rowing of the oarsman or the movement of the water, and, as in several other works by him, quotes the Dies Irae plainchant in allusion to death.

[edit] Complete list

(1880) - Oil on board, 74 x 122 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Reisinger Fund, New York.
(1880) - Oil on canvas, 111 x 115 cm Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Kunstmuseum, Basel.
(1883) - Oil on board, 80 x 150 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin.
(1884) - Oil on copper, 81 x 151 cm, destroyed in Rotterdam during World War II.
(1886) 80 x 150 cm, Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig.

[edit] Graphic novel

A French graphic novel in five tomes, L'île des morts, was published on the Böcklin painting's theme with a strong influence of writer H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos by the editor Vents d’Ouest at Issy Les Moulineaux, in 1996.

[edit] Other Artists

The Swiss artist H. R. Giger has also created a version of this picture, simply called "Bocklin".

Roger Zelazny used the picture as an inspiration for the meeting place of two mythological antagonists in his novel Isle of the Dead.

[edit] The Island of the Dead

The Isle of the Dead is associated with pre-Christian Celtic mythology and occurs as a theme in a number of European countries. In Britain is it thought to be either a translation of the Welsh word "Annwn" for the underworld or an extant geographical feature of Britain.

The author Bernard Cornwell, in his books The Warlord Chronicles of the 1990s, associates the Isle of Portland in Dorset with the Isle of the Dead. In the book he describes how the island was a place of internal exile and damnation. The causeway that almost links the island to the mainland was guarded to keep the "dead" - who included the criminally insane - from crossing the Fleet and escaping back into Britain. However, this is literary conjecture and not archaeological fact.

[edit] Trivia

August Strindberg's play The Ghost Sonata ends with the image of Isle of the Dead, one of Strindberg's favorite pictures.
There is an downloadable map for the computer game Aliens versus Predator 2 based on the Isle of the Dead.