Böcklin's Isle of the Dead (1880): Five Versions and a Famous Obsession
Isle of the Dead (Die Toteninsel) is a symbolist painting by the Swiss artist Arnold Böcklin, first painted in May 1880. It shows a small boat carrying a coffin and a white-robed figure toward a rocky island of cypress trees and tomb doorways. Böcklin made five versions between 1880 and 1886, and a sixth in 1901, which is why several museums hold one.
What are we looking at in Isle of the Dead?
A rower stands at the stern of a small boat, and in front of him a figure in white stands beside a draped coffin. Ahead rises a rock island, its cliffs cut into doorways and its centre filled with tall, dark cypress trees. The water is almost still and the sky is a heavy grey-green. Nothing moves, and nothing in the picture says whether the boat is arriving or whether the visitor is alive.
Cypresses were planted in southern European cemeteries, so the trees tell the viewer where the boat is going. Böcklin gave no fixed reading, and the picture still works that way.
Why are there so many versions?
The painting was a commission that kept growing. In the first version, finished in May 1880, there was no coffin and no white figure. A widow, Marie Berna, saw the unfinished picture in April 1880 and asked for a version of her own. At her request Böcklin added the coffin and the figure, an allusion to her dead husband, and he later added both to the first canvas.
The versions are listed below.
Version 1, 1880: oil on canvas, 111 × 155 cm, Kunstmuseum Basel.
Version 2, 1880: oil on board, 74 × 122 cm, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Version 3, 1883: oil on board, 80 × 150 cm, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
Version 4, 1884: oil on copper, destroyed in Berlin during the Second World War and known only from a black-and-white photograph.
Version 5, 1886: oil on board, 80 × 150 cm, Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig.
Version 6, 1901: painted with his son Carlo Böcklin, now in the Hermitage.
Fritz Gurlitt, the Berlin dealer who commissioned the third version, gave the picture its title in 1883. Böcklin's own name for it was Die Gräberinsel, Tomb Island. Sources differ on whether Basel or New York was painted first; the Basel canvas is the one usually shown as the original.
Who saw it, and why did it spread?
Reproductions made the picture famous. Prints in black and white hung in homes across the German-speaking world, and the stark shapes survived the loss of colour well. Sigmund Freud is reported to have kept a reproduction in his office, and Lenin is reported to have had one above his bed. In his 1936 novel Despair, Vladimir Nabokov joked that a reproduction hung in every Berlin home.
Sergei Rachmaninoff wrote his symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead, Op. 29, in 1909 after seeing a black-and-white print. He reportedly said that he would probably not have written the music had he seen the original in colour.
The third version later had a darker history. Adolf Hitler bought it in 1933 and hung it at the Berghof and later in the New Reich Chancellery, an association the painting has never quite lost.
A picture this still and dark suits a wall of dark wood or deep green, and its black-and-white fame shows how well the composition survives without colour.
Where does Isle of the Dead sit in art history?
Böcklin (1827-1901) was born in Basel and worked mostly in Italy and Switzerland. He painted myths, ruins and dreamlike landscapes, and the Symbolists who followed him, including the Belgian and French painters of the 1890s, treated him as a forerunner. Compare the quiet of the Finnish painter in Hugo Simberg's Garden of Death, or the funeral in the snow in Friedrich's Abbey in the Oakwood. Both pictures place death in a calm, closed landscape.
For other pictures that disturb through stillness, see the most unsettling paintings in art history.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Isle of the Dead painting about?
It shows a boat carrying a coffin and a white figure to a rock island of cypress trees and tomb doorways. Böcklin did not give a fixed meaning, but it is usually read as a passage to death.
How many versions of Isle of the Dead are there?
Böcklin painted five between 1880 and 1886 and a sixth in 1901. One was destroyed in the Second World War and survives only in a photograph.
Which museum has the original Isle of the Dead?
The first version is in the Kunstmuseum Basel. Others are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Museum der bildenden Künste in Leipzig and the Hermitage.
Did Rachmaninoff write music about Isle of the Dead?
Yes. His symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead, Op. 29, dates from 1909 and was inspired by a black-and-white print of the picture.
Zocine Art Design is an independent studio that prints classic paintings as wall art.
Browse Böcklin and other classic art prints in the archive at Zocine on Etsy.
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