1077 - Fritz von Uhde

Fritz von Uhde The will-o'-the-wisp Oil on canvas. 100 x 142 cm. Provenance Eduard Schulte Gallery, Berlin, 25.10.1908. - Count Luckner, Altfranken Castle near Dresden. - Rudolph Lepke, Berlin, 6.12.1922, lot 122. - Private collection, Germany. Exhibitions Fritz von Uhde Ausstellung, Berlin 1908, Eduard Schulte Gallery, no. 2. Literature H. Rosenhagen (ed.): Uhde. Des Meisters Gemälde, Stuttgart und Leipzig 1908. p. 8 ill. (with different measurements). Will-o’-the-wisps have always been regarded as profoundly ambivalent beings. Whilst in Goethe’s works they eat gold and spit it out again when desired, in other German folk tales and legends they are notorious above all for luring walkers and boatmen astray in moors or gloomy landscapes with their seductive light. In this early work by Fritz von Uhde, the phenomenon manifests itself in the form of a brightly glowing female figure. With her lantern, she illuminates the otherwise dark, nocturnal scene on the bank of a body of water. In the distance, another faint light approaches, seemingly emanating from a small boat. Although the luminous figure appears to be hurrying away from the boat, she turns round and, lifting her glowing veil, gazes expectantly at the ferryman. Whether the encounter with the will-o’-the-wisp will bring good or ill fortune is deliberately left open within the composition’s mysterious atmosphere.