Theodor Matthias Von Holst was one of the Johann Heinrich Füssli's last pupils, and his favourite. He was deeply influenced both by his master's Romantic classicism and by the Pre-Raphaelites. He was born in London in 1810 and died there in 1844. His father Matthias Von Holst, of Russian origin, had moved to England as a music teacher in1807.

Theodor was admitted to the Royal Academy shortly after 1820, studying under Füssli who by then had reached the venerable age of 80. He showed his work at the Royal Academy for the first time in 1832, achieving great success.

His artistic interests turned chiefly towards subjects of a macabre and supernatural kind, and his work often included elements of sophisticated eroticism. His critics were inevitably split between those who recognised his painterly talents and others who disapproved of his "morbid" imagination.

He worked in Germany for a few years, travelling in 1829 to Dresden where he made the acquaintaince of the engraver Moritz Retzsch who was extremely popular in England thanks to his drawings illustrating Goethe's Faust, the works of Shakespeare and other works of poetry. The meeting was to have a crucial impact on Von Holst's stylistic development.

During the first few years spent in Germany he combined the precepts he had learnt from Füssli with a more Gothicising, nervous, typically German linear style, but following the publication of Delacroix's lithographs illustrating Faust in 1828, the French artist replaced the German influence. Von Holst developed an extremely fluid style enlivened by a contrasting palette characterised by the use of jewel-like colours, almost always set against a dark ground and with occasional traces of irony and frivolity, his painter's world marked by his own melancholy and personal eccentricity,.

Von Holst's work is a typical reflection of the tension and impatience so characteristic of the Romantic temperament.

Goethe's Faust was a literary work that fired his imagination more than most.

The first part of Faust was published in 1808, the second in 1832, and the tragedy was an instant success in every sphere of the arts from painting and illustration to music, the theatre and ballet.

The large painting under consideration here, Scene from Goethe's Faust, was exhibited by von Holst in 1833 at the British Institution in London. The work depicts a dancing couple amidst demonic figures; the setting is a clearing surrounded by lush vegetation, illuminated by the moon. The direction in which the figures are dancing suggests (running counter to one of the most deeply-rooted conventions in Western art) that the composition should be read from right to left. The presence of demonic figures shows that the scene in Faust from which the artist took his inspiration is the Walpurgisnacht, the Walpurgis Night when Faust and Mephistopheles dance with two witches. Von Holst was one of the few artists to paint this subject, and indeed it is an extremely rare occurrence to find it among the various illustrations of Goethe's Faust. The painting shows Faust and a woman in the midst of a gloomy, whirling mass of figures and trees standing out starkly against the dark night.

If we observe the picture closely, we can identify Faust as the main dancer, his face a clear self-portait of the artist (see T. M. von Holst, Portrait of Gustav von Holst and his brother, Theodore; The Wilson Museum). Behind him we see his comrade Mephistopheles, his hood blowing in the wind as he pays court to an enchantress in rich medieval costume.

The group on the right gravitates around the figure of Gretchen, who hides her face but she can be identified by the iron ring around her wrist, given that in Goethe's work she was chained in prison and with a veiled and sorrowful face. Facing her we see the Devil in his unmistakable red, feathered attire beside a snake with a human head, the serpent of paradise. His malignant gaze is turned on the couple dancing in the centre and on the murky figures hiding in the undergrowth. At the Devil's feet stands a cockerel, which a popular superstition tells us is the demon's comrade or agent.

 

Only the figure on the far right is impossible to associate with a particular character in the tragedy. A young man in what appears to be a Dominican habit and holding a crozier sports a laurel wreath on his head, and a star gleams at the top of his forehead. This figure can be identified with the Genialische, the brilliant, a character who appears among a series of characters during Walpurgis Night. It represents nineteenth-century rationalism, appearing ridiculous in a magical context.

He represents a caricature of literary genius. The man looks at Gretchen and the scene around him in horror. His attributes do not correspond to any known allegorical personificaiton but he may be a personification of the Church, in which case the group around Gretchen would depict a struggle for her soul between good and evil spirits with a specific allusion to her salvation.

The light in the picture focuses on the dancing girl, while Faust is partially overshadowed by a woman who appears almost to devour him in a dancing leap. The dancer's head is higher than that of the young man, her dance causing her long blond hair and earrings to sway and her transparent dress to stream out. In contrast to the medieval costume of Mephistopheles' lover, the dancer shows a clear Classical Greek influence. Von Holst paints the woman with deathly pale flesh, thus characterising her as a spectre. Her long plaits hide her gaze as she guides all of Faust's movements while he, his eyes lowered, accompanies her as though spellbound. Some scholars have identified the girl as the character Lilith[1], a traditional female demon whom we encounter in a short passage in Goethe's Walpurgisnacht scene referring to her long, shining blond hair. Other scholars such as Gert Shiff[2], identify her with Helen of Troy, who appears late in Goethe's work but is inserted into the scene by Holst. Cadaverous and marmoreal, she hypnotizes Faust and directs his every move, and the boy playing the harp could be identified as their son Euphorion. In any case, the image of the young woman is intended to evoke the attractive and threatening ghost described by Goethe in his work.

The woman on Faust's left is the Fairy Qeen Titania, identified by the crescent moon on her diadem.

In the hidden figure to the right of Titania, we can recognize Valentine, Gretchen's brother, at the moment he cursed her after her duel with Faust; numerous paintings of her death show him in similar attitudes.

The other elements on this side of the composition refer to Faust's death: the jaws of Hell promptly opening to devour the sinner, while behind, an angel strews roses across the Devil's path.

The symbolic depiction of Faust's sin on the right is concluded by an allusion to his redemption on the left.

Gert Schiff gives a plausible explanation as to why the painting should be read from right to left, in an article[3] in which he argues that if we put ourselves in Faust's position in the painting instead of being opposite him, we no longer perceive the picture as being back to front. The right-hand side represents the divine or Heaven, while the left is linked to the earth and the netherworld. Seen in this light, Faust's sin and the forces of Hell are situated on the left while the angels' victory and his salvation are on the right. Thus the distribution of Hell and Redemption is, in effect, the same as in a traditional depiction of the Last Judgment.