﻿What you’re currently listening to is a symphonic poem created by Russian composer Sergei
Rachmaninov. In 1907 in Paris, he saw a black and white reproduction of Arnold Bocklin’s Isle of the
Dead and, in 1908, inspired by it, he completed this composition and named it after the painting.
The reproductions of this painting were all around Europe. Novelist Vladimir Nabokov
said in his novel Despair that they could be “found in every Berlin home”.
Both Sigmund Freud and Vladimir Lenin had them on their walls. Even Adolf Hitler bought
one of the 5 originals in 1933. He also owned close to a dozen of Bocklin’s other works.
Arnold Bocklin was a 19th century swiss symbolist painter. In 1880,
one of his patrons visited his studio and saw the unfinished canvas on an easel and
loved it. She asked if she could have a version of it with a figure and a coffin. Her husband had
just passed away and she wanted an artwork that would help her get through her loss.
But this painting has appealed to hundreds, if not thousands of people outside of Marie Berna,
the widowed patron. But why? This painting doesn’t have a clear narrative, clear characters... it
doesn’t even have a clear setting. The Isle of the Dead could be anywhere and it could be anything.
There’s an elusiveness to the painting, an appealing mystery.
Bocklin said that it was “a dream picture:
it must produce such a stillness that one would be awed by a knock on the door.”
The elusiveness of the painting is what creates
this stillness. The elusiveness of the painting is what made it so successful.
But where does it come from? Why is this image so elusive, why is it so mysterious?
To answer that question, we have to go back to Marie Berna who forever tainted this painting
with the loss of her husband. Because of her addition, Death permeates this artwork. If
it wasn’t for the small detail of the figure and the coffin, this painting could be about
adventure, about exploration and discovery. But the ghostly figure makes it about Death.
Death was a recurring theme in Arnold Bocklin’s work and life. He lost his
first fiance before they could get married and he lost over half of his 14 children
before he died. Struck by several illnesses throughout his life,
Bocklin acquainted death numerous times, making it one of his strongest themes.
The secret to the Isle of the Dead’s elusiveness lies in Death itself. Death is infamously elusive.
Many have likened this scene to a sort of afterlife, comparing it to the crossing of the
Styx River in Greek mythology, a passageway to the afterworld. But more importantly,
just like the painting itself, we don’t know where the afterlife is, we don’t even know if it’s real.
But the Isle of the Dead, though it’s been spread throughout Europe and has resonated with many,
isn’t, to me, the most evocative work about Death painted by Bocklin. Let me show you
another of his paintings about death, his Self-Portrait with Death playing the fiddle.
It’s an unconventional self-portrait in many ways. First, the artist is not looking at the viewer,
as he traditionally would. He doesn’t seem to be looking at anything at all actually,
he seems to be listening to something, and this brings us to the second point, which is,
well, there’s a skeleton playing the violin over his shoulder.
Believe it or not, Bocklin isn’t the first artist to paint a portrait of a man with a skeleton
over his shoulder. This portrait of Sir Brian Tuke, made in 1540, also has a skeleton seemingly
conversing with the subject. But I find Bocklin’s version much more appealing if not for the simple
fact that his skeleton is animated. The fact that it’s playing the violin gives it life.
There’s also the fact that this shows Bocklin listening to the sound of Death while painting.
He could be listening to Death while painting the Isle of the Dead, he could be listening to Death
while painting the Plague, he could be listening to Death while painting a portrait of himself.
And that’s the most fascinating part about this portrait. The fact that he painted it
with Death in mind. Bocklin would only die 30 years after completing this painting and,
though he did acquaint Death, he wasn’t about to die behind his easel.
However, painting a self-portrait does, in a way, confront you with death.
When painting an artwork, you are creating something that,
if it’s not immortal, will outlive you decades or even centuries. A self-portrait,
transposing your own image onto a canvas, will allow your image to be immortalized for centuries.
And I like to think that, while painting, Arnold Bocklin paused to think about that. He paused
thinking about how, in relation to his painting, he had relatively little time left.
The immortality of his self-portrait, confronted him, with his own mortality.