The Art Gallery at the Athenaeum contains one of America’s unique collections of 19th century American paintings. Each week we will feature a different work on this page. We hope educators will use this link as a tool to enrich their art curriculum. Vermonters and other citizens throughout the nation can now visit our gallery in this new, intimate, and informative way.
The text describing each painting was written by Mark D. Mitchell, Assistant Curator of Nineteenth-Century Art at the National Academy Museum. The digital images were prepared by Robert Jenks of Jenks Studio of Photography in St. Johnsbury, VT.
Please note that the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum prohibits the use of images from its collection in public exhibition, broadcast, electronic reproduction or publication in any form without prior written permission from the institution. If you would like to reproduce any of the Art Gallery images in any form, contact Irwin Gelber at 748-8291, extension 307.
Gabriel von Max (1840-1915), Bohemian (Czech)
St. Ursula, undated
OIL ON CANVAS, 17 1/2 x 14 inches
Gift of Horace Fairbanks
Within the known record of Gabriel von Max's works, religious figures are fewer in number than allegorical scenes, but they appealed similarly to the artist's interest in the relationships between a figure's physical appearance and inner state, as seen here in the figure of the fourth-century virgin martyr St. Ursula. Max was fascinated with mysticism and occultism, and his St. Ursula conveys a sense of his intensive study of the figure as a balance between reality and the spiritual.