Projects of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar are funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Free State of Thuringia, represented by the State Chancellery of Thuringia, Department of Culture and the Arts.
The earliest painting of Nietzsche
How Curt Stoeving’s portrait of the ailing philosopher influenced the Nietzsche iconography
How does one become an icon? In the case of Friedrich Nietzsche, the matter is well documented. His career as a subject of fine art began at his mother’s home in Naumburg, where he lived starting in 1890 after his release from the psychiatric hospital in Jena. His sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche also moved in with her mother after her husband committed suicide in Paraguay. In celebration of Nietzsche’s 50th birthday in 1894 and to celebrate the founding of the Nietzsche-Archiv, the family requested that a painting be made of the philosopher, as they only possessed photos of Nietzsche. But how does one portray a mentally ill person, or for that matter, an ailing philosopher? For Nietzsche’s mother, there was only one artist who could meet the challenge: Franz von Lenbach. But his sister Elisabeth insisted on commissioning the Berlin painter Curt Stoeving.
Stoeving quickly produced two paintings which he had meticulously prepared in advance by means of photos and measurements: the painting shown here and a considerably larger one in landscape format which now hangs in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Both portraits depict Nietzsche in an outdoor setting enclosed in a densely covered pergola at his Naumburg residence. This is where he often spent time enjoying the fresh air, as visitors in those years reported.
In the Weimar painting, Nietzsche is presented on a white bench in the corner of the pergola with his hands awkwardly overlapped. Beneath his black overcoat, he is wearing a white hospital gown as one can also see in Hans Olde’s Weimar photograph. What is interesting in this picture is the rigid, frontal perspective and plastered-down hair which possesses none of the usual dynamics of other portrayals of Nietzsche. A comparison with the photo that Stoeving used as his model reveals that the artist attempted to mellow the more obvious signs of illness. Instead of a half-recumbent figure whose legs were propped up on a footstool and who seemed to stare blankly in the distance, Stoeving painted a seated gentleman of almost statuary dignity.
The portrait disappointed the expectations of Nietzsche’s mother and sister, nonetheless. The family doctor assured them that his patient never looked that sick even on his worst days. This damning critique did nothing to lessen the widespread impact of the image. The painting was reprinted in 1895 in the avant-garde journal PAN and was used shortly thereafter in a fundraising campaign for the Nietzsche-Archiv. Nietzsche’s friend, the writer Paul Lanzky, even dedicated a poem to the portrait in 1897, in which he attempted to capture the insanity of his revered “master”.
The significance of Stoeving’s portrait is that it laid the groundwork for a veritable Nietzsche iconography. The culmination of this development came a few years later with the portraits by Max Klinger and Edvard Munch, the creation of which Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche played a key role. Nietzsche’s sister cultivated – and distorted – not only the philosophers work, but also his image for posterity.
Curt Stoeving (1863–1939): Friedrich Nietzsche in the pergola at his mother’s house in Naumburg, 1894
Dimensions: 105.6 x 77.3 x 2.3 cm
Material/technique: oil on canvas
Inv.-no.: NGe/00605
Signed and dated: “CVRT STOEVING f. / 1894. / Naumbg.”
Provenance: Nietzsche-Archiv
Collections: Painting collection of the museums of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar (paintings); Nietzsche-Archiv Iconography at the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv (GSA) in Weimar (photo), https://ores.klassik-stiftung.de/ords/f?p=401:2:::::P2_ID:150073