During four decades (1870 – 1913) Max Brückner lead one of Germany’s leading scenic art studios of Germany in Coburg, in N. Bavaria. With his younger brother Gotthold he created influential stage designs for Richard Wagner’s operas at the Bayreuth festival.

 

Our mystical Symbolist painting with its typical dreamlike atmosphere shows Isolde waiting at night for her lover Tristan, an episode taken from act two of Richard Wagner’s famous opera, which premiered in Munich in 1865. This painting probably dates from circa 1886, when Brückner designed the stage decoration for the first performance of Tristan and Isolde in Bayreuth at the request of Cosima, Wagner’s widow.

 

 

German theatre and landscape painter

Coburg 1836 – 1919 Coburg

 

Son and successor of Heinrich Brückner (1805 – 1892), theatre painter at the Hoftheater (Court Theatre) in Coburg.

Pupil of his father, of the German landscape painter Albert Zimmermann in Munich between 1854 and 1857, and finally of the German scenic painter Carl Wilhelm Gropius (1793 – 1870) in Berlin.

 

Brückner’s earliest theatre assignment dates from 1861.

He had a good relationship with Ernst II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (the elder brother of Prince Albert, who was to become the consort of Queen Victoria of England). The Duke had already paid for Brückner’s study trip to London and for his studies under Gropius. In 1865 he appointed Brückner theatre painter for life at the Hoftheater of Coburg, with the express permission to accept foreign orders.

 

Max Brückner founded a studio in Coburg in 1870, where he was joined two years later in 1872 by his younger brother Gotthold (1844 -1892). The Brückner Brothers Studio for Scenic Stage Design produced stage sets for all important theatres in Germany for the following 40 years. Their most important and influential work was made at Richard Wagner’s (1813 – 1883) Bayreuth Festival. They also designed stages for King Ludwig II of Bavaria. Their ‘Atelier für szenische Bühnenbilder’ also regularly worked abroad, for example in New York, Saint Petersburg and Zurich.

 

Max Brückner also worked as a landscape painter. The British Royal Collection holds about 19 landscape watercolours by Max Brückner.

 

Gotthold Brückner died in 1892. Since Max Brückner had no children he appointed his pupil Max Kürschner as his associate in 1913 and after he went blind in 1914 as his successor. Max Brückner passed away five years later.

 

 

Max and Gotthold Brückner created the stage design for the first representation in 1876 at the Bayreuth Festival of Wagner’s The Ring des Nibelungen. They had replaced the Viennese stage designer Josef Hoffmann (1831 – 1904) who had been inapt to deal with this huge commission. Their mise-en-scène was to influence productions of the cycle for decades to come. 

 

Between 1882 and 1911 the Brückner workshop created stage sets for all major Wagner operas.

 

 

Wagner composed this important opera between 1857 and 1859 in Munich. It only premiered in the Bavarian capital in June 1865. Wagner based the story on the 12th century romance by Gottfried von Strassburg.

 

It is not known who designed the stage decoration at the premiere in Munich. But at its first performance in Bayreuth in July 1886, only given after Wagner’s death (1883) our Max Brückner was responsible for the scenery.

 

Isolde, daughter of the King of Ireland, is brought per ship to Cornwall by Tristan, whose old uncle, the local king, she has to marry. Tristan has killed Isolde’s fiancé, so she decides to poison him, but her maid has given them both a love potion.

In the second act both lovers reunite at night. In our painting Isolde is waiting for Tristan to arrive. King Marke discovers both lovers, Tristan tries to kill himself.

In the final act Isolde travels to Brittany where she hopes to cure the mortally wounded Tristan. At her arrival he dies in her arms. King Marke who has heard the truth about the love potion has also come here to reunite the lovers, but also arrives too late. Isolde kills herself.

 

Our painting is an excellent example of Symbolism, of which the five versions of The Isle of Death (‘Die Toteninsel’) by the Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin (1827 – 1901) rank among the best-known examples. Those five compositions and our painting share the same dream-like sense of alienation, of a loaded atmosphere with a figure standing against strangely-lit towering trees.

 

There is actually a link between Böcklin, The Isle of Death and Wagner. Böcklin painted the five versions between 1880 and 1886. Aged 52 he received the first commission to paint ‘a picture for dreaming’ from a young widow from Frankfurt, Marie Berna. At that stage the painter suffered from a serious nervous depression, which almost led to suicide. His wife proposed that he would travel to the Bay of Naples, which he did in July. Here he visited Wagner who was staying at Posillipo, on the N. outskirts of Naples. Böcklin had been asked by Wagner’s wife Cosima to design the set for the master’s last opera, Parsifal. While listening to fragments from Twilight of the Gods Böcklin argued with Cosima about her proposal for the stage decoration. Wagner intervened and said to Böcklin: ‘You don’t know much about music, do you?’ And the painter replied: ‘Hopefully more than you do about painting.’ Böcklin continued his journey to the lovely island of Ischia, recovered physically and psychologically … and painted his master piece.

 

 

Because it is an excellent example of German Symbolist painting and because it shows a dramatic scene from a major opera of Richard Wagner.