Both a symbolist painting of the highest order and one of von Keller’s
masterpieces, In the Moonlight (1894) treats the chiaroscuro essence of
desire. Its female subject, not so much demonized as lent an erotic
aura, is elevated to the status of an aesthetic being whom the viewer
is invited to adore. The play of its signifiers, the interpreter might
suggest, interpellates its recipients on a variety of levels; it is a complex
combination of semiotic systems, and contemporary aesthetic theory
would likely speak of its ‘discursive machinery’. Ultimately, however, its
subject proper is painting itself, as well as the disclosure of its medium.
      Like his colleagues in the fin de siècle, von Keller was prompted
by an apprehension of the decadence of his era to seek out his cultural
benchmarks in the past, chiefly in classical antiquity. Cassandra,
the prophetess of doom, offered his generation a figure whose mood
reflected their own diffuse presentiment of imminent catastrophe.
Von Keller’s Faustian Descent into Hell (1912) conjures up the morbid
erotic thrill in the air on the eve of the First World War, the flowering
of an epoch deeded to death. Fire becomes a metaphor for a lascivious
fascination with fatality, consumptive passion and incandescent love.
The protagonist of this picturesque study of disintegration is the very
image of a femme fatale. One of von Keller’s most enchanting figures,
seemingly swept up in a maelstrom of anthemic joy, is his 1909
Camilla Eibenschütz as Myrrhine in ‘Lysistrata’. The viewer is cast
in the role of a man consumed by love, in an atmosphere of pure joie
de vivre.