The Chronicler (recto and verso)
April 5, 1888 (recto); April 6, 1888 (verso)
Medium
Graphite, heightened with white goauche (recto and verso), on tan wove paper
Dimensions
43.2 × 30 cm (17 1/16 × 11 13/16 in.)
Classification
graphite
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
113932
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Drawings by the Symbolist artist Max Klinger are very rare. This intimate drawing was completed over April 5-6, 1888, while the artist was staying in Rome on the Via Claudia near the Colisseum. This sensitive figure drawing helped to prepare Klinger's most important painting of those years, The Crucifixion, 1888/1891. In an almost autobiographical reflection, it depicts the scribe who unemotionally documents the world's greatest tragedy that rages around him.
About the Artist
Max Klinger · 1857–1920
Max Klinger, born on February 18, 1857, in Leipzig to a wealthy family, emerged as one of Germany's most innovative artists across painting, sculpture, printmaking, and graphics. Demonstrating early talent, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe in 1874 as a pupil of Karl Gussow, following his teacher to the Berlin Academy upon Gussow's appointment as director, and graduated in 1877 ...