Lied (Sorrow), Maximilian Lenz | Mia

night scene along a body of water; female figure in LL corner lying on PL side, looking across water; house with lit windows in background, reflected in body of water but obsured by overhanging branches along upper part of image — Lied (Sorrow), c. 1898
Maximilian Lenz
Lithograph
The Winton Jones Endowment Fund for Prints and Drawings and the John E. Andrus III Endowment Fund 2020.21.2
Not on View
The German title for this lithograph is Leid, meaning “sorrow.” The Austrian Symbolist Maximilian Lenz does not make the cause of the young woman’s distress explicit. On a dusky night, she lies naked before a body of water, gazing away from us toward a palatial building. If it weren’t for the soft reflection, we could barely make out the building due to the low hanging branches that seem to envelop us along with the girl.

The dream-like quality of this image is reinforced by the gauzy texture and the slatey color of the ink. Symbolist artists often produce dreamy—or nightmarish—images that leave us to wonder about their meaning.

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Details

Title: Lied (Sorrow)
Dated: c. 1898
Artist: Maximilian Lenz
Nationality: Austrian
Artist Life: 1860–1948
Role: Artist
Gallery: Not on View
Department: European Art
Dimension: 11 3/4 × 11 5/8 in. (29.85 × 29.53 cm) (image)18 5/8 × 15 5/8 in. (47.31 × 39.69 cm) (sheet)
Credit: The Winton Jones Endowment Fund for Prints and Drawings and the John E. Andrus III Endowment Fund
Accession Number: 2020.21.2
Medium: Lithograph
Country: Austria
Century: 19th century
Provenance: Sale Gonnelli Casa d’Aste, Florence, Italy, October 9, 2017, lot 334; (Eric Gillis Fine Art, Brussels, Belgium); sold to MIA, 2020.
Rights: No Copyright - United States
Classification: Prints
Object Name: Print
Wikipedia: Cite this information
Metadata: Click here to see the machine readable JSON data that underpins this page.
Curator Approved: This record has been reviewed by our curatorial staff but may be incomplete. These records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you notice a mistake or have additional information about this object, please email collectionsdata@artsmia.org.

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