6223 - Hirémy-Hirschl, Adolf

Hirémy-Hirschl, Adolf The Souls on the Banks of the Acheron. Oil on canvas, mounted on a backing board. 46.8 x 80 cm. Circa 1898. Compositional study for Hirémy-Hirschl’s major painting *The Souls on the Banks of the Acheron* from 1898, in the Austrian Gallery Belvedere, Vienna (215 x 340 cm. Inv. No. 942. Purchased in 1908 at the Künstlerhaus, Vienna). The souls of the dead have settled on the banks of the Acheron in human form. Accompanied by Hermes Psychopompos, the guide of souls, they wait restlessly for the crossing into the underworld. The ferryman Charon’s boat is already approaching the river. Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl depicts this story from Greek mythology with emotional intensity and a penchant for expressiveness in pose, gesture, and facial expression. These encompass a broad spectrum of expression, ranging from inner calm to panic-stricken terror. The realistic depiction of the naked, pale, and partly veiled bodies in the finished painting is based on photographic models. Despite the dramatic staging, this enhances the work’s eerie effect. Darkness, suffering, and death are emblematic of the style of Dark Romanticism to which the artist is committed here. Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl’s success was based primarily on his dramatic history paintings. For each of these works, he produced a large number of studies that document their creation process step by step. To test the arrangement of the figures within the pictorial space as well as the effect of the color scheme, the artist first created oil sketches. Our compositional study already contains all the essential elements of the final version of the painting. Once he had determined the composition of a painting, he turned his attention to its individual elements. This primarily involved creating drawings based on models and costumes—an extremely meticulous step in the creative process. - Please ask for condition reports for the lots, as the condition is usually not mentioned in the catalog. - Please ask for condition reports for individual lots, as the condition is usually not mentioned in the catalog.