Isle of the Dead (painting)

Isle of the Dead: "Basel" version, 1880
Isle of the Dead: "New York" version, 1880
Isle of the Dead: Third version, 1883
Isle of the Dead: Fourth version, 1884 (black-and-white photograph)
Isle of the Dead: Fifth version, 1886

Isle of the Dead (German: Die Toteninsel) is the best-known painting of Swiss Symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901). Prints were very popular in central Europe in the early 20th century—Vladimir Nabokov observed in his 1936 novel Despair that they could be "found in every Berlin home".[1]

Böcklin produced several different versions of the painting between 1880 and 1886, which today are exhibited in Basel, New York City, Berlin, and Leipzig. A sixth version, begun in autumn 1900 with the help of Böcklin's son Carlo Böcklin and finished by Carlo in 1901, is part of the Hermitage Museum's collection in Saint Petersburg.

  1. ^ Nabokov, Vladimir (1936; English translations 1937, 1965), Despair, p. 56.