Wilde Jagd

The 1899 'Wilde Jagd' at the Musée d'Orsay is Stuck's return to the Wild Hunt subject after his 1889 treatment of the same theme at the Lenbachhaus, painted a decade earlier as one of his career-launching works. That the later version entered one of France's most prominent collections signals the international reach of Stuck's reputation — the Orsay, opened in 1986 but holding the former Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume's collection of nineteenth-century European painting, represents the highest level of institutional recognition for art of this period. The Wild Hunt (Wilde Jagd or Wildes Heer) is a Germanic mythological phenomenon: the nocturnal procession of Wotan and his spectral retinue across the stormy winter sky, carrying the souls of the dead and portending disaster for those who witness it.

Ten years after his first Wild Hunt, Stuck's handling of the subject would show greater compositional assurance and more controlled technique. The frenzied diagonal rush of spectral riders is organized with better internal logic — the figures more clearly individuated, the atmospheric conditions.