Observations placeholder

In 1853, three years after arriving in Rome, Böcklin married for the second time.  His second wife was a young Italian girl, Angela Rosa Lorenza Pasucci, the daughter of a papal guard.  The couple went on to have fourteen children.  Thus this was a happy time for him, a time of new love and fresh sounds and sights.

Böcklin changed his style of painting in the mid 1850’s.  Although he still used themes from Classical mythology, whereas his painting before incorporated landscapes and scenes he had seen, they now began to be about what he ‘imagined’, in effect this was true inspiration and though few seem to realise this it was his first attempts at incorporating symbols.  

In 1859 Böcklin went to Munich to exhibit some of his works at the Munich Kunstverein.   It proved to be a great success for Böcklin as one of the works which he had completed the previous year, his second version of Pan im Schilf  (Pan in the Reeds), was bought by King Maximillian II, the ruler of Bavaria. 

Fourteen of his other paintings were purchased by Friedrich Graf von Schack, the Munich art collector.   Furthermore, in 1860, through the auspices of von Schack,  Böcklin was offered the post of Professor of Landscape Painting at the newly founded Kunstschule in Weimar.