Year: 1897
Size: 24 x 39 3/4 in./61 x 101 cm
Condition: B / Slight tears and stains at edges.
Sandreuter created this design for his closest mentor and friend, Arnold Böcklin, on the occasion of his anniversary exhibition at the Kunsthalle Basel. Both men were Swiss artists of the symbolist and fin de siècle movements—"... possessed of a certain fund of romantic lyricism, sometimes allying itself to that passion for the grotesque which is perhaps one of the distinctive characteristics of the German-Swiss mind" (The Studio, Vol. 23, p. 219). They met in Munich in 1873, and later worked in Florence and Paris together. Böcklin's influence on Sandreuter was so strong that critics accused Sandreuter of being a lifelong imitator of his mentor—but Böcklin didn't seem to mind, and even cared for his pupil when he fell ill with diabetes.