Arnold Bocklin
(1827-1901)
Arnold Bocklin, a Swiss painter, sculptor, graphic artist, one of the most distinguished symbolists in the European art was born on October, 16, 1827 in Basel, Switzerland, where he got primary education. In 1845-1847 Bocklin studied at Dusseldorf under the guidance of Adolf von Hildebrand and Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, There Arnold got acquainted and became friends with Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach. Then he travelled to Munich, Brussels, Antwerp and Paris, where he copied the paintings of old artists and studied the compositions of his contemporaries. Originally he was a landscape painter, but his travels influenced him greatly and he turned to classical and Renaissance art. These new influences brought allegorical and mythological figures into his compositions. Bocklin influenced Surrealist painters such as Max Ernst and Salvador Dalн, and Giorgio de Chirico. In 1866 he resided in Basel, in 1871 in Munich, in 1885 in Zurich and at the end of his life in the outskirts of Florence, where he died on January, 16, 1901. Bocklin's paintings, especially “ The Isle of the Dead”, inspired several late-Romantic composers to create great pieces of music. For example, Sergei Rachmaninoff composed symphonic poems, and in 1913 Max Reger composed a set of Four Tone Poems of which the third act is entitled “The Isle of the Dead”.
