On Death, Part I

In <em>On Death, Part One</em>, a series of ten etchings, the Symbolist Max Klinger envisioned the ephemeral nature of life and the suddenness of death, themes that prompted one contemporary critic to call the portfolio a modern "Dance of Death." In <em>Night</em>, the first in the series, a man sits on a bench in an enclosed garden. A moonbeam breaks through the clouds over the sea, and on the path to the right is a lily with a fluttering butterfly. The landscape seems an extension of the figure’s melancholy thoughts, a landscape of the mind.