head of a girl

Gabriel von Max was a Czech-German painter known for his combination of academic technical mastery with Symbolist and occult interests — his monkeys contemplating paintings (in his famous series of 'apes as art critics') were widely celebrated, but his more conventional subjects like this 'Head of a Girl' (1885) demonstrate the academic foundation beneath his more unusual works. Von Max was deeply interested in Spiritualism and psychical research, which influenced the dreamlike, atmospheric quality of his figure paintings even when the subject was apparently conventional.

Von Max renders the girl's head with his characteristic soft, atmospheric technique — the face emerging from a slightly misty or atmospheric ground with the quality of gentle reverie that distinguished his figure work. His technical mastery created surfaces of extraordinary delicacy, the transitions of tone in the face rendered with the sfumato-like quality that gives his figures their dreamy presence. His palette is warm and subdued, the colors harmonized within a narrow tonal range.