Sleeping Wotan by Rudolf Maison (1854-1904)

Partially gilded bronze, depicting Wotan on his throne, on his original wooden column. Signed on the base, founder's mark on the back: GUSS MAYR OBERNDORF MUENCHEN.
Rudolf Maison (1854-1904) was a German sculptor born in Regensburg, Germany, where he began his studies, which he then continued in Munich. His work is part of the Romantic tradition, with the particularity of having detached himself from the classical Baroque spirit to move towards a naturalism that he pushed further than his contemporaries, which prevented him from falling into the distant coldness of academicism, in favor at the time in German sculpture. He treated in sculpture unconventional subjects, or more usually treated in the field of painting. A true Baroque frenzy, a sought-after exoticism, as well as a challenge to the laws of balance constitute the most salient characteristics of his sculptural style, very singular in its time. Most of his monumental works (including a portrait of Kaiser Frederick I in front of the Bode Museum in Berlin, a statue of Emperor Otto I in front of the Reichstag, as well as monumental figures mounted on the eaves of the same building, did not survive the ravages of the Second World War. Rudolf Maison died in Munich in 1904 and was buried in the Westfriedhof cemetery. "Rudolf Maison will hold his place in the history of 19th-century German sculpture": These are the words that conclude the obituary of the German sculptor, published in 1904 in the Leipziger Illustrierte Zeitung by the art critic Fritz von Ostini (reprinted in Kunstkronik N. F. 15 (1904), sp. 268-269). Ostini was somewhat mistaken in this conclusion of his article: although the artist was one of the most important sculptors of his time, his person and his work subsequently fell almost completely forgotten.
Maison is a rare artist in many ways; in comprehensive works on the history of 19th-century art, he is most often mentioned in a marginal manner. However, in the late 1970s, the German art historian Dietrich Schubert published an essay aimed at his rehabilitation, which lamented the poor state of preservation of hundreds of plaster models abandoned in a warehouse in Regensburg, a city for which he carried out numerous monumental commissions. He argued in favor of their appreciation despite the ideological recuperations and subsequent aversions they may have experienced. "As much as one should today - despite all the interest in the official art of the 1900s - take a critical look at Rudolf Maison's sculpture, there is no reason to let them rot. They should constitute the rare case of a legacy of a sculptor from the period of Kaiser Wilhelm I, still preserved after two world wars." A thesis project he initiated was never completed. It is also surprising that Rudolf Maison appears only marginally in the reference work on the Berlin school of sculpture "Ethos und Pathos", written in 1990 (Ethos und Pathos: die Berliner Bildhauerschule, 1786-1914: Beiträge mit Kurzbiographien Berliner Bildhauer) and that he has completely been overlooked among the succinct biographies of artists supplementing this work. Rudolf Maison will have suffered greatly from the ideological weight of having been the most significant artist of the reign of the first German Emperor Wilhelm I, with its share of criticism and consequent aversions.
It is only recently that Rudolf Maison has finally been recognized and studied: the German art historian Bernhard Maaz, in his work on 19th-century German sculpture (Die Skulptur in Deutschland zwischen Französischer Revolution und Erstem Weltkrieg) finally took a closer look at this artist and suddenly increased his public profile. In 2016, a comprehensive monograph on the artist was published: "Rudolf Maison (1854-1904) Regensburg - München - Berlin", published by Karin Geiger and Sabine Tausch (Ed. Schnell Steiner): this is the catalogue of an exhibition "Rudolf Maison (1854-1904) - Sculptor for the King, the Emperor and other "art lovers"" which took place at the Historical Museum of the City of Regensburg, from 18 September 2016 to 2 April 2017. It is in this last publication that we found the bulk of our documentation concerning the exceptional bronze sculpture "Wotan endormi", which I am offering for sale today.
In contemporary documents (1902), the original plaster cast of "Wotan asleep on his throne" is clearly visible in the artist's studio on Tizianstrasse in Munich. With his "striking and grandiose" interpretation - in the words of the art critic Ostini - of the god Wotan (another name for Odin, the Norse-Germanic father of the gods), Rudolf Maison created in 1900 the masterpiece of his late career. This sculpture, which he himself particularly appreciated, according to his family, remains lastingly impressive over time. His Wotan sits pensively on a monumental and archaic throne (the Hlidskjalf), which offers him a bird's eye view of the worlds he dominates. A sun disk adorns the high back of the throne, flanked by the ravens Hugin and Munin, symbolizing thought and memory—who serve as his spies and scouts: the latter whisper to him what they have seen of the nine worlds. Wotan's arms are wide open, resting on the armrests. His distinctive feature is that he is one-eyed. In his right hand, he holds the spear Gungnir, lowered to the ground. His head is tilted downward, his left eye (the one that sees) gazes fixedly at the horizon. Rudolf Maison did not model a master of the world above all, omnipotent and infallible, but a tired fatalist despite his physical strength, bent by his tasks; a human sage with weaknesses—like the one in the musical works of Richard Wagner. He is indeed a central character in the tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung: under the spelling "Wotan", he appears in The Rhinegold, The Valkyrie and – under the name "The Wanderer" – in Siegfried. Wagner's "Wotan", like that of Rudolf Maison, is resigned, recognizing and affirming the guilt and the fatality of the "Twilight of the Gods". Clear references to the creator of the Ring are not only the staging, but also the designation and spelling "Wotan", under which the first bronze version - a little larger than the one I am offering you today - was awarded a gold medal in 1901, as part of the VIII International Art Exhibition at the Glaspalast, the "Museum of Ice" in Munich (a large exhibition pavilion which has since disappeared).