Małpiarnia malarza. Darwinizm w twórczości Gabriela von Maxa
The Painter’s Monkey-House. Darwinism in the Work of Gabriel von Max

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses some aspects of the work of Gabriel von Max (1840–1915), a painter who graduated from Art Academies in Prague and Munich. At the beginning of the twenty-first century the artist is being rediscovered as a Darwinist studying the life of monkeys, even though his oeuvre includes many religious and occult motifs as well as paintings inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s works and Richard Wagner’s operas. The primates from von Max’s collection were the living objects of his artistic and scientific studies. The painter dissected monkeys and documented them in the form of photographs. He painted monkeys in situations characteristic of humans — as art critics or pianists (this type of representation is confronted with some theories of Darwin and his followers). Von Max’s acquaintance with a German Darwinist, Ernst Haeckel, resulted in painting Pithecanthropus alalus (speechless ape-man), which was a representation of the “missing link” in the hypothetical line of evolution delineated by Darwin.

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