Sphinx by the Sea

Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach ranks among the most eccentric artists of the 19th century. After a severe case of typhoid fever, the artist converted to vegetarianism and gave up cigarettes and alcohol. He abandoned the Catholicism that he had been brought up in, and began to follow his own brand of spirituality, centered on free love, nudism, and oneness with nature. He founded his own commune in Munich, but after financial trouble, fallouts with former devotees, and a trial resulting from the propensity of his commune’s members to sunbathe nude, Diefenbach began looking to leave his native Germany. As a result, when he was invited by the Österreichischer Kunstverein, an Austrian artists’ association, to paint ‘sensational paintings as quickly as possible’ for an exhibition in Vienna, he jumped at the opportunity both to relocate and to earn some much-needed money. Unfortunately, because of financial mismanagement, the exhibition did not give the artist the economic windfall he was anticipating, but it did ultimately result in a move to Vienna, where he founded yet another controversial commune, called Himmelhof, not far from the city. Following further negative publicity for the domineering way he ran his commune and more financial difficulties, in 1900 the artist relocated again to Capri, then a popular spot with artists and Bohemians, where he would die in 1913.
Diefenbach’s work is best described as symbolist in style, though he worked alone rather than being part of any particular school of painting and primarily used his art as a vehicle to promote his own ideals. His best-known painting is his monumental 34-panel frieze Per aspera ad astra, painted during his time in Vienna. A sphinx appears in the final panel of Per aspera ad astra, cementing its importance in the artist’s visual vocabulary. After the artist’s trip to Egypt in 1896-1897, where he was able to visit the Great Sphinx of Giza firsthand, the motif appears with even more regularity in his art. Diefenbach even planned to build a commune and reform school in Egypt to be housed in a building in the shape of a sphinx, though this never came to fruition. The sphinx, which represented the unsolved mysteries of life for the artist, also appears in several works painted during his time in Capri, like the present painting.
We are grateful to Dr. Claudia Wagner for confirming the authenticity of this work on the basis of a photograph. A letter from Dr. Wagner dated 20 February 2020 accompanies this work.