Franz von Stuck (1863 Tettenweis - 1928 Munich)
Portrait of Daughter Mary Wearing a Frilly Hat (Portrait der Tochter Mary mit Rueschenhut)
pastel and watercolor on paper
49,5 x 41,6 cm
circa 1909
signed on right "Franz von Stuck"
References:
Thomas Raff, Modell und Maler: Mary Stuck und ihr Vater [Model and Painter: Mary Stuck and her Father] (Tettenweis: Franz von Stuck Geburthaus, 2007), pgs. 60-61 ("Kindliches Gorgoneion") ["Childlike Gorgon"].
The Munich-based artist Franz von Stuck (1863-1928), a co-founder of the Munich Secession in 1892, was one of the leading German artists associated with the Symbolist movement. From 1895, he was a professor at the Munich Academy of Art, where he had a profound influence upon many artists of the 20th century, including Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Josef Albers, among others. At his funeral in 1928, von Stuck was eulogized as Munich’s “prince of art.” In portraiture, Franz von Stuck’s favorite subject was his daughter Mary (1896-1961), here depicted at about the age of 12. In a number of the portraits, Mary is wearing a frilly hat. Some scholars believe that those portraits, especially the present example showing Mary with a perhaps slightly sinister gaze, are an allusion to the Gorgon or Medusa, a popular subject in Symbolist art; in this view, Mary is presented as a childlike Gorgon (“Kindliches Gorgoneion”).
The Daulton Collection was a major lender to the 2013-2014 exhibition “Franz von Stuck” at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, the first monographic exhibition in the USA of von Stuck’s work. For more works by Franz von Stuck in The Jack Daulton Collection, see www.franzvonstuck.com.
