2-735-940 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Night, from On Death, Part I, Opus XI (Nacht, Vom Tode, Erster Teil, Opus XI), 1889. In On Death, Part One, a series of ten etchings, the Symbolist 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.