Arnold Böcklin, Isle of the Dead (third version), 1883

Arnold Böcklin

1827–1901 · Switzerland

Researched by Daniel Bilmes, painter and educator.

Böcklin painted from memory in the studio, never outdoors. He observed nature intensely, then returned and painted what memory had kept, preferring wood panel over canvas. Skies and open water went down first in Leimfarbe (a glue-size distemper) in a single session and were never touched again; landscape and figures were then built over them in thin glazes of tempera grassa, an emulsion of egg yolk, linseed or walnut oil, and dammar. In the late 1890s he commissioned a Florentine pharmacy to produce custom tempera paints to his own specification.

ProcessLayered TemperamentImaginative LineageRenaissance

Signature moves

Refuse plein-air painting on principle

Direct refusal of the emerging Impressionist orthodoxy. The painter should observe nature intensely but paint only after the visual data had been processed through memory and imagination — what was lost in the interval was supposed to be lost.

Why it matters · A landscape painted in front of the scene records what was there. A landscape painted from memory records what mattered. Böcklin's discipline argues that the loss of literal detail through ripening is the condition of symbolic resolution. Painters who paint outdoors carry the noise.

Use Leimfarbe for the sky and never touch it again

Skies, open sea, and distant atmospheric passages were blocked in with Leimfarbe (glue-size distemper of animal glue and pigment) in a single early session. Once set, these passages were permanent — Böcklin "did not touch them again."

Why it matters · A passage committed in the first session and not retouched preserves a specific freshness oil cannot replicate. The painter who reworks the sky three times produces three different skies on top of each other.

Rudolf Schick, Diary entry on Böcklin's technique, 1869, 1869

Run multiple versions of the same subject in parallel

The Isle of the Dead exists in five autograph versions painted between 1880 and 1886 — each with different lighting, color temperature, and technical specifications. Each new version corrected the technical or atmospheric problem the previous version had left partly solved.

Why it matters · The versions form a series of answers to the same question rather than a set of equivalent finished objects. Painters who treat each painting as terminal lose the option of using the next version to solve what the last one missed.

Commission a custom Florentine pharmacy emulsion

In the late 1890s commissioned a Florentine pharmacy to produce a range of tempera paints to his own specification — running a private pigment-and-binder factory for personal use.

Why it matters · Most painters accept commercial materials and accept the limits those materials impose. Böcklin's discipline of running custom binder development is the most ambitious such project in nineteenth-century European painting.

Patrick Dietemann and Wibke Neugebauer, A Colloidal Description of Arnold Böcklin's Painting Villa am Meer II, 2014

Stage the studio with theatrical spot-lighting

Combined natural light with directional spots. Arranged motifs (plaster casts, models, still-life) under spotlighting, effectively staging the scene as theatrical composition before translating into paint.

Why it matters · The specific stage-set quality of Böcklin's finished pictures comes from this. Painters who only ever work under ambient light produce ambient paintings. The directional spot is a methodological tool.

In the studio

Studio

Light: Florence studio (1874 onward). Combination of natural light and theatrical spot-lighting.
Position: Studio working — refused plein-air; arranged motifs under directional spots.
Session length: Multi-session per painting; multi-version per subject (five versions of Isle of the Dead).
Tools: Wood panels (preferred for smaller works — rigid support produced fewer cracking stresses on complex colloidal binder systems) · Plaster casts of classical figures, armor, architectural fragments arranged under spot lighting as figure reference · Custom Florentine pharmacy tempera paints (late 1890s) · Theatrical spot-lighting
Notes: Mediterranean landscapes reconstructed in the studio that no single real location had ever supplied. The Isle of the Dead is a memory-composite of Etruscan cliff-necropolises, Tuscan cypress cemeteries, and the mood of San Michele in Venice.

Source: Rudolf Schick, Diary entries on Arnold Böcklin, 1869

Palette

Ground: Often barium sulfate as extender pigment in the ground for high luminosity under thin upper layers. Wood panel preferred over canvas.
Whites: Lead white
Earths: Standard earth range
Colors: Deep carmine and madder reds · Cerulean and cobalt blues · Muted greens (associated with Holbein's Basel panels) · Restricted to "Italian Early Renaissance" colors
Medium: Layered binder system. Leimfarbe (glue-size distemper) for flat luminous backgrounds — matte, absorbent, fast-drying. Tempera grassa (egg yolk + linseed/walnut oil + dammar) for figurative and mid-ground passages — different passages used different egg-to-oil ratios. Resin addition gave specific passages glossy depth.

Source: Patrick Dietemann and Wibke Neugebauer, A Colloidal Description, 2014

Workflow, from blank canvas

1. The picture to dream by
A general mood — often in response to a specific patron request (Marie Berna's 1880 commission for the first Isle of the Dead was explicitly "a picture to dream by").
Why: The specific subject is secondary to the emotional register. The mood is the painting before the subject is.
2. Leimfarbe background
Skies, open water, distant atmospheric passages blocked in with glue-size distemper in a single early session. Once set, never reworked.
Why: Permanent commitment in the first session preserves a specific atmospheric freshness.
3. Oil and emulsion mid-ground
Landscape elements, architecture, large figurative masses built in tempera-grassa emulsion over the Leimfarbe in thin glazes that pulled warm or cool key out of the underlying binder structure.
Why: Layered emulsion produces the specific inner glow pure oil cannot replicate.
4. Figurative and mythological elements
Centaurs, fauns, nereids, reclining figures often added late, sometimes at patron request — treated as "indigenous wildlife" of the landscape rather than imposed on it.
Why: The figures and the landscape inhabit the same memory-space. Adding figures last lets the landscape inform what the figures are.
5. Finish — the spectral quality
A painting was done when it attained "spectral" or "subjective" quality — emotional register of the finished mood.
Why: Neither technical resolution nor documentary accuracy. If the mood is complete, the painting is complete.

Refusals — what they would not do

Refused plein-air painting — observed in nature, painted only from memory after ripening.
Refused photography as reference.
Refused commercial paints — commissioned a Florentine pharmacy to produce custom tempera.
Refused single-version finality — painted Isle of the Dead five times and other subjects multiple times.
Refused single-binder universal handling — built layered systems with passage-specific binders.

Reference

Primary source: Composite memory of a lifetime of European travel — Swiss Alps of childhood, Italian Mediterranean of adult working years, Etruscan cliff necropolises outside Rome, Tuscan cypress cemeteries, San Michele in Venice, Holbein panels of native Basel.
Photography: Did not work from photographs.

Exceptions

Plaster casts of classical figures, armor, and architectural fragments arranged under theatrical spot-lighting as working reference for figurative passages.
Northern Renaissance (Holbein, Dürer, the Basel painters) for material chemistry and linear drawing discipline.
Roman Campagna and Ligurian coast for specific light and atmospheric register.

Lineage

Every teacher and student below sits on the site-wide teacher-student map.

Teachers

Johann Wilhelm Schirmer · 1845–1847 — Düsseldorf Academy. Leading historical-landscape painter of the Düsseldorf school.

Influences

Holbein and the Northern Renaissance — material chemistry and linear discipline.
Italian Renaissance and Mediterranean landscape — light and atmosphere.

Students

No formal atelier; left no large group of direct students.
Influence transmitted through exhibited work — particularly the Isle of the Dead series.
Direct heirs: Franz von Stuck in Munich (treated Böcklin as the foundational Symbolist landscape painter and built his mythological practice explicitly on Böcklin's precedent), and the broader Munich and Vienna Secessionist movements.
Diary-recorder: Rudolf Schick — student who worked closely with him in the late 1860s. Schick's 1869 diary is the single most important first-person technical source.

In their own words

“Sky and ocean he painted with Leimfarbe, then continued with oil paint in the other parts, and did not touch again the areas painted first.”

— Rudolf Schick, Diary entry on Böcklin's technique, 1869

First-hand account of the Leimfarbe-then-oil sequence.

“A picture to dream by.”

— Marie Berna, Letter commissioning the first Isle of the Dead, 1880

The commissioning patron's request — became the template for every subsequent Symbolist commission.

“I return to the studio and paint what the mind has kept.”

— Arnold Böcklin (attributed), Recorded working philosophy

The core memory-ripening principle.

Techniques and practices

Tempera Grassa

A hybrid egg-and-oil emulsion paint that combines the matte, luminous quickness of egg tempera with the flexibility and depth of oil.

Memory Ripening

Turning a sketch or unfinished painting to the wall for weeks or months so the artist's eye can forget the literal scene and find the essential one.

Lead-White Highlights

Reliance on lead white (flake white) for luminous, long-lasting highlights, especially on skin and metal.

Questions and answers

Did Arnold Böcklin paint from life?

No. He refused plein-air painting on principle and did not work from photographs. He observed nature intensely, then returned to the studio and painted only what memory had kept. For figurative passages he worked from plaster casts of classical figures, armor, and architectural fragments arranged under theatrical spot-lighting.

What medium did Böcklin use?

A layered binder system, with the binder chosen per passage. Skies and open water were painted in Leimfarbe, a glue-size distemper of animal glue and pigment that dries matte, absorbent, and fast. Figures and mid-ground passages used tempera grassa, an emulsion of egg yolk, linseed or walnut oil, and dammar, mixed at different egg-to-oil ratios for different passages, with added resin where he wanted glossy depth.

What was Böcklin's palette?

Lead white, a standard earth range, deep carmine and madder reds, cerulean and cobalt blues, and the muted greens associated with Holbein's Basel panels. He restricted himself to "Italian Early Renaissance" colors.

What surface did Böcklin paint on?

He preferred wood panel over canvas for smaller works. The rigid support put fewer cracking stresses on his complex colloidal binder systems. His grounds often used barium sulfate as an extender pigment, which kept the ground luminous under thin upper layers.

How did Böcklin start a painting?

With a mood, often set by a patron. Marie Berna commissioned the first Isle of the Dead in 1880 as "a picture to dream by." The skies, open sea, and distant atmospheric passages then went down in Leimfarbe in a single early session, and once set he never reworked them.

Who taught Böcklin, and whom did he teach?

He trained under Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, the leading historical-landscape painter of the Düsseldorf school, at the Düsseldorf Academy from 1845 to 1847. He ran no formal atelier and left no large group of direct students. His influence traveled through exhibited work, above all the Isle of the Dead series; Franz von Stuck in Munich built his mythological practice on Böcklin's precedent.

If this painter is your match

You believe the painter's job is to distill — to let direct observation ripen into memory, and to paint only what memory has chosen to keep. The specific facts of a scene are almost always less important than the mood the scene produced.

Borrow this: For your next landscape, do not paint outdoors. Observe the scene as intently as you can. Stay with it for an hour. Take no photographs. Then turn your back on it, return to the studio, and wait a week. Paint only at the end of that week, only from what your memory has kept.

Adjacent painters

Lawrence Alma-Tadema1836–1912

A Dutch-born Victorian archaeologist-painter who built a private library of five thousand annotated photographs of Roman ruins, reconstructed Pompeiian interiors as full studio sets, and brought every square inch of every canvas to the same degree of forensic resolution.

Andrew Wyeth1917–2009

A Brandywine painter who inherited N.C. Wyeth's narrative training but abandoned illustration for egg tempera on gessoed panel, worked the same Pennsylvania farms and Maine houses for seventy years, and built each picture through thousands of cross-hatched tempera strokes over weeks or months.

Artemisia Gentileschi1593–1654

A Baroque painter who ran her own workshops, set the dark brown ground to do the shadow work, and refused to send a drawing before the contract was signed.

William Blake1757–1827

An English Romantic visionary who refused both oil paint and live models, drew the figures he saw in empty chairs as if they were sitting there, and built his own wooden press because the commercial trade was a fetter to genius.

Shared the workbench

Other researched painters who used at least one of Böcklin’s techniques.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema1836–1912

Andrew Wyeth1917–2009

Artemisia Gentileschi1593–1654

A Baroque painter who ran her own workshops, set the dark brown ground to do the shadow work, and refused to send a drawing before the contract was signed.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau1825–1905

A Parisian academic master who ran the studio on a factory schedule (7 a.m. until dark, no lunch break), kept his medium recipes in numbered sketchbooks down to the drop count, and resolved every figure and fold in finished preparatory drawings before a single stroke landed on the final canvas.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder1525–1569

A Flemish master who sketched the Alps on horseback in 1552 and for the rest of his life composed his panel paintings in the studio from a library of those drawings, a set of peasant-wedding field notes, and a habit of "moralizing" every scene through absurdist humor.

Dean Cornwell1892–1960

The "Dean of Illustration" who inherited the Brandywine method through Harvey Dunn, moved to London for five years to apprentice under Frank Brangwyn on the Los Angeles Public Library murals, and taught that the composition had to read as a finished abstract design from thirty feet before any figure reference was brought into the studio.

Primary sources

Rudolf Schick, Diary entries on Arnold Böcklin, 1866–1869, 1869. Schick was a young German painter who spent three years working closely with Böcklin in Rome. His diary is the principal first-hand technical source on the Leimfarbe-then-oil sequence, the daily studio routine, and the iterative multi-version method.
Patrick Dietemann and Wibke Neugebauer, A Colloidal Description of Arnold Böcklin's Painting Villa am Meer II (1865), 2014. Doerner Institut Munich technical analysis. Identifies the full binder complexity — glue-size distemper, egg-oil emulsion, dammar resin.
Count Adolf Friedrich von Schack Gallery Records, Munich. The Munich gallery of Count Schack, Böcklin's principal patron in the 1860s.
J. Paul Getty Museum Curatorial Archive, Arnold Böcklin files. Curatorial research files on the Getty's Böcklin holdings.

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