A forgotten Symbolist: Alexander Frenz

I really love this etching by the almost forgotten German Symbolist Alexander Frenz. Frenz seems to have drawn much of his inspiration from myth and fairytale, as in this mysterious scene in which a hooded man summons a tree nymph out of the stump of a blasted tree, with music he is playing on an antique stringed instrument. The etching was first published in Originalradirungen des K�nstlerklubs St. Lucas, D�sseldorf, Heft 1 (c.1893). This copy as published by E. A. Seemann, Leipzig, for Zeitschrift f�r Bildende Kunst, N. F. IV, 1893.

Alexander Frenz, Idylle
Etching with aquatint, 1893

Alexander Frenz was born in Rheydt in 1861. Frenz studied at the D�sseldorf Kunstakademie and Malerschule, and in the atelier of Franz von Lenbach. Like many German artists of his day, Alexander Frenz was profoundly influenced by the Symbolist art of Franz von Stuck. He died in D�sseldorf in 1941.

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