speak of the devil

“Acheron,” 1902.  Reinhold Kukla (Slovenia,1877-1965). Oil on canvas, in its original carved wooden painted frame, with the title bottom centre. 

“The influence of Böcklin on his Symbolist work is most visible in this, of all his paintings, which is clearly indebted to the several versions of ‘The Isle of the Dead’ (painted from 1880-86).”

“‘Acheron’ imagines one of the rivers of the underworld, which the dead must cross to enter Hades; Charon, the ferryman, emerges in his boat from the cavernous entrance, on his way to pick up the newly-dead soul who waits in the foreground. This less than jolly subject, rendered even more desolate than Böcklin’s island by its practically monotone treatment, has a frame which reinforces the theme both in structure and in colouring. It has a vestigially aedicular form, rather in the manner of Stuck’s minimalist aedicular frames, but stripped down to an even more skeletal form – pilasters, entablature and predella suggested by panels contained in linear mouldings. The title is incised in Greek letters on the base.”

The Shore - Barry McGlashan , 2023.

British, b. 1974 -

Wounds of the Earth