The work has been loaned for the exhibition "Der untergang des Römischen Reiches. Visionen und Mythen in der Kunst Europas" (25 June-27 November 2022) at the Stadtmuseum Simeonstift, Trier (Germany). Further information available upon request

Signed and dated 1899 lower right

Provenance: Probably Léon Deschamps Collection, director of 'La Plume'; London, Christie's, November 1972, no.131; London, Christie's 1 December 1989, n ° 1064; Paris, Hôtel Drouot, Loudmer Scp., 11 March 1991, n ° 56; Paul-Loup Sulitzer Collection, Paris; Paris, Binoche & Godeau, 4 December 1995, n ° 54; Paris, Hotel Drouot, Me Boisgirard, 22 June 2001, n ° 30; Galerie Historismus, Paris; London, Sotheby's, 12 November 2008, no.263; Paris, Artcurial, 26 September 2017, n ° 446; Private collection, Italy

Exhibitions: "Symbolist Exhibition", Shibuya, Tokyo 1970, n ° 15-1;
"Der Kuss der Sphinx: Symbolismus in Belgien", Kunstforum, Wien 2007-2008, n ° 83

Among the masterpieces of Henry De Groux's art, "The death of Siegfried" is at the top of the Belgian artist's symbolist production, a large painting that condenses in itself the interest for Wagner's work of which De Groux was extremely passionate (also for his aesthetic results close to the traditional imagery of Symbolism), as much as the bursting charge of modernity that transpires from the very realization of the painting, a chromatic and material vortex that seems to envelop the characters in an apocalyptic atmosphere that transposes into the surrounding landscape and natural elements the extreme tension of the moment of death of the hero of the Nibelungen saga, which seem to revive Turnerian suggestions or even reminiscences of the seemingly endless horizons of the background of the "Battle of Alexander and Darius at Issus" by Albrecht Altdorfer (1529). This frenetic composition, full of an almost mystical violence, was thus described by the painter's son-in-law, Baumann: "the girls of the Rhine, their arms outstretched, desperate, that emerge from the whirlpools, these beautiful green waves that de Groux modeled like the flesh of a woman, but powerless to save the defeated hero, overthrown [...] while Wotan hits him in the side with the spear of death ". In the crowded and tense composition of the scene, full of almost infernal figures, De Groux here seems to re-propose the suffocating excitement of his masterpiece painted ten years before, "Christ attacked", which seems to have served as a model for a third key painting in the production of the Belgian artist, linked to the contemporary scandal of the "Affaire Dreyfus", the "Zola attacked", of 1898, only one year before "The death of Siegfried". In June 1899 two oil paintings with the same Wagnerian subject are attested, one in the collection of M. Férard and the second belonging to L. Deschamps, director of "La Plume", which is most likely the work proposed here

Literature: "Henry de Groux", in 'La Plume', n ° 139-140, 1-15 April 1899, p. 238 and p. 285;
"Henry de Groux et son oeuvre of him '" Éditions de La Plume, 1899, p. 46 and p. 93;
É. Baumann, "La Vie terrible d'Henry de Groux", Paris 1936, p. 122;
P. Jullian, "French Symbolist Painters: Moreau, Puvis de Chavannes, Redon and their followers", London 1972, mentioned on p. 60;
"ABCdaire du Symbolisme et de l'Art Nouveau", Paris 1999, p. 114;
M. Gibson, "Symbolism", Cologne 2006, p. 105;
B. Tillier, "Henry de Groux (1866-1930) peintre symboliste de l'épopée napoléonienne", in 'Sociétés & Représentations', 2007/1, n ° 23, p. 287;
R. Gillette, "The Art of the Interior", New York 2011, p. 36