On Death, Part I (1889): Art, History and Details

On Death, Part I (1889) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Max Klinger (German, 1857–1920).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In On Death, Part One, a series of ten etchings, the Symbolist Max Klinger envisioned the ephemeral nature of life and the suddenness of death, themes that prompted one contemporary critic to call the portfolio a modern "Dance of Death." In Night, the first in the series, a man sits on a bench in an enclosed garden. A moonbeam breaks through the clouds over the sea, and on the path to the right is a lily with a fluttering butterfly. The landscape seems an extension of the figure’s melancholy thoughts, a landscape of the mind.

Object facts

• Title: On Death, Part I
• Date: 1889
• Creator attribution: Max Klinger (German, 1857–1920)
• Culture: Germany, late 19th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching and aquatint
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1933.126

Collection credit

Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland

Further reading listed by the museum

• Francis, Henry. "Recent Accessions to the Department of Prints." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 21, no. 10 (December 1934): 158-161.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.