Daniel Maclise (1806-1870), ‘A Scene from “Undine”, 1843“In this
Daniel Maclise (1806-1870), ‘A Scene from “Undine”, 1843“In this scene, taken from the German novel ‘Undine’ by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué (1777-1843), the young knight Huldbrand escorts his bride, Undine, through an enchanted forest full of writhing elves and goblins. By her marriage to a human the water spirit Undine gained a mortal soul but lost the prospect of eternal life. Father Heilmann, having just performed the ceremony, emerges from beneath a canopy of trees, while the evil and sinister Kühleborn, spirit of the waters and Undine’s uncle, rises up ahead of them in an attempt to return Undine to her family.”…..”The imaginary scene also reflects the particularly British fashion for fairy painting. Earlier artists such as J. H. Fuseli (1741-1825) and his follower Thomas Wainewright (1794-1847) had drawn upon Fouqué’s ‘Undine’ in the 1820s, but it was in the 1840s that the story seems to have captured the imagination of artists in England. The subject was second only to Goethe’s ‘Faust’ as the most popular German literary or historical source for painters and sculptors during the period. Between 1843 and 1859 eighteen pictures were exhibited at the Royal Academy based on ‘Undine’ (Vaughan 1979, pp. 257-65). Two other events during 1843 might have provided immediate inspiration for Maclise’s choice of subject: the first performance of Perrot’s ballet, ‘Ondine’, with music by Cesare Pugni (1802-70), and the appearance of a series of engraved illustrations of the story by Julia Emily Gordon (1810-96).”Source: https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/405638/a-scene-from-undine -- source link
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