Gabriel von Max

Gabriel Cornelius Ritter von Max (23 August 1840 – 24 November 1915) was a Prague-born Austrian painter, and professor of history painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

His studies included parapsychology (somnambulism, hypnotism, spiritism), Darwinism, Asiatic philosophy, the ideas of Schopenhauer, and various mystical traditions.

The spiritual-mystical movement was emphasized by the writings of Carl du Prel, and the Munich painter Albert Keller was also an influence.

Gabriel von Max was a significant artist to emerge from the Piloty School, because he abandoned the themes of the Grunderzeitliche (genre and history), in order to develop an allegorical-mystical pictorial language, which became typical of Secessionist Art.

In 1878 Max was appointed professor of history painting at the Munich Academy, but he gave this post back in 1883 because it took up too much of his time.

Max enjoyed considerable success during his lifetime and could command almost any price for his paintings, but at the beginning of the 1890s, his star began to decline.

In 1893, shortly after his divorce from his first wife, Max married his long-time lover Ernestine Harlander (1863-1938) in Munich, with whom he had already had an affair since 1885/86.

The spacious artist's villa with studio at Holzbergstraße 10 in Ambach on Lake Starnberg, which the couple bought in 1893, is now a listed building.

After his elevation to the Bavarian personal nobility effective December 2, 1900, he was only rarely in Munich, where he still maintained his collection in the studio building on Paul-Heyse-Strasse.

In 1908, his painting "The Lion's Bride" became celebrated, and was depicted in motion pictures as an hommage in the Gloria Swanson film, Male and Female, (1919), directed by Cecil B. de Mille.