Arnold Bocklin: Paintings in Close Up

Book excerpt: Arnold Böcklin was a Swiss symbolist painter, influenced by Romanticism. His painting is symbolist with mythological subjects often related with the Pre-Raphaelites. He depicts fantastical figures alongside classical buildings, frequently revealing an obsession with death, creating a strange, fantasy world. Art critics have constantly found it not easy to categorize this original and eccentric artist. Böcklin hated giving titles to his pictures and declared that he painted in order to make people dream: "Just as it is poetry's task to express feelings, painting must provoke them too. A picture must give the spectator as much food for thought as a poem and must make the same kind of impression as a piece of music..."