Otto Eckmann with the Scherrebek Weaving School, Five Swans, 1897
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IMAGE LIST | ACTIVITIES
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In November 1894 Otto Eckmann, who had enjoyed success with his symbolist canvases, auctioned off all of his paintings. He bid them, as he wrote to the auctioneer, a "cordial farewell" but hoped, "May we never meet again." He had determined to devote his energies exclusively to the applied arts, and this he did, designing for metalwork, stained glass, silver, and tapestries.
This wall hanging, woven at the Kunstwebschule (art weaving school) at Scherrebek (now in Denmark), is probably his best-known design. Within a short time it had been reproduced in many of the modern art journals and was hailed as the "freshest product of the new movement." It was also a great success for Scherrebek, which produced some one hundred copies of it.
After Eckmann abandoned painting, some of his first works were woodcuts that he produced using traditional Japanese techniques. His study of Japanese prints is also reflected in his designs.
In Five Swans we find all the major characteristics of his work: strong contrasts of color, sinuous line, motifs from nature, and tension between the surface as illusion or representation and the surface as sheer decorative pattern. A critic in 1902 pointed to this tapestry as "a good example of how a pupil of Japanese art can transpose natural motifs into a delightful play of colored surfaces and lines by suppressing the material process and concentrating entirely on the decorative."
Swans, though, appear in many of Eckmann's works and must have had some symbolic meaning for him. German art nouveau tended generally to have a strongly pantheistic approach to nature, seeing the creator and creation as the same thing.
Learning Activities
Art
• Describe the sense of space conveyed in this tapestry. Is there depth? How is it achieved? Compare the sense of space in a medieval work like one of the well-known Unicorn Tapestries (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
Humanities
• Research pantheism in American literature from the nineteenth century.