Rudolf Maison (1854-1904), African Athlete

Rudolf Friedrich Maison (29 July 1854 Steinweg - 12 February 1904 Munich) was a German sculptor. He was the son of master carpenter Karl Friedrich and brewer’s daughter Anna Ursula Reisinger, and started out as an apprentice carpenter, likely under his father’s tutelage. In 1877 he began studying architecture at the Polytechnic School in Munich, but was forced to drop out for financial reasons. He subsequently completed his military service and earned a living as a private teacher, draughtsman and model builder for the industry. He obtained his knowledge of sculptural art independently, and in 1879 opened a workshop in Munich in 1879 for decorative work, architectural designs, model construction and portraits. Though his initial forays were into architecture, building architectural models led him to his calling as a sculptor. 

In 1890, he rented a workshop at Theresienstraße 148 in Munich. During this period he became friends with draughtsman, painter and sculptor Franz von Stuck, painters Julius Adam and Karl Raupp, and writer Eugen Croissant. After catching the attention of the art enthusiast King Ludwig II of Bavaria at an exhibition and receiving a commission from him to build an immense Pegasus fountain for his new palace in Herrenchiemsee, Maison had clients lining up to place orders. Among his surviving works are a figure group from 1891 titled Wehrkraft zu Lande und zu Wasser (approximately: Defending Land and Sea), which shows two bare-chested fighters armed with swords and harpoons. This work continues to grace the southeastern tower of the Reichtstag building in Berlin. 

In 1892, Maison was one of the 96 founders of the Munich Secession, an association of visual artists who seceded from the Munich Artists' Cooperative. In 1931, the Munich-born art historian Alexander Heilmeyer named Maison as one of the primary culprits of the demise of naturalism, because “...when Maison modelled a horse, one could almost believe one was looking at a living creature. In his execution of his figures, he sought to perfect every detail, every crease of the skin, and for fabrics, to recreate the exact structure of the weave; he strove to represent all things as realistically as possible...”. 

This was in no way intended as praise. Heilmeyer further noted that “Maison also strives to reinforce the lifelike impression through use of colour”, and criticised him for his readiness to use spans and scaffolding to compensate for stability issues. 

Maison himself took little note of the lack of recognition from the art world: he had plenty to do, and one day surprised his fellows at an exhibition with his statue Neger auf einem Esel reitend (1893), i.e. Negro Riding a Donkey. He placed it between the many ceremonial models of kings and soldiers, which drew much attention from the crowd. He participated in the Chicago World Fair of 1893 and the Paris Exposition of 1900. In 1894, he received a small gold medal at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition. A number of his designs were executed by the Viennese manufacturer Friedrich Goldscheider. In 1895, Maison became an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Art, as well as (later) of the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and the Viennese Artists’ Association. Rudolf Maison died of the consequences of a perforated ulcer, and was buried at Westfriedhof in Munich. His widow left some forty models of his work to the town of Regensburg, which are on display in the Regensburg Museum of History.

Around 1890, Maison’s oeuvre incorporated a new theme that reflected the colonialism and imperialism of the time. The major European powers – including the German Empire under Emperor Wilhelm I and Otto von Bismarck – had divided Africa into colonies in 1858, with Germany acquiring Cameroon, German South West Africa, Togo and German East Africa. This led to a resurgence in exoticism that inspired Rudolf Maison to find a new subject for his art, and he produced various sculptures themed around African people during this relatively short period. 
From the German perspective, i.e. through the lens of the Industrial Revolution, people in Africa led entirely different lives. Africans were perceived to be much more in contact with nature, using their strength and instincts to survive. This created an image of the African as a powerful figure, a kind of primordial man. 

One of the images that Maison produced during this period is the statue shown here: The Athlete. The standing African man visually references the classic Greek statue type of the Apoxyomenos, a famous example of which was produced by the Greek sculptor Lysippos (born ca. 390 BC), which represents an athlete using a strigil to scrape sweat and dust off his arms. Maison executed this figure in statues of two sizes: 40 cm and 77 cm. 

In 1893 he displayed his statue at the Internationale Kunstausstellung des Vereins bildender Künstler Münchens Secession (no. 808), as well as at the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung (no. 2020) one year later and the Internationale Kunstausstellung Dresden (no. 1134) in 1897. 

Rudolf Maison produced several copies of this statue, a number of which are now part of public collections. For example, the Nationalgalerie in Berlin has a 77.5 cm bronze version, also stamped with the caster’s mark Brantstetter München. A similar object exists in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum. His catalogue raisonné notes two further versions of this statue, one of 45 cm and one of 84 cm, which were auctioned at Helbing in Munich in 1913, where Rudolf Maison’s estate was auctioned off. The slightly larger size of these statues is explained by the approximately 6.5 cm round foot on which they are placed. The current location of both statues is unknown. It is possible that the statue here described, which stands upon a round serpentine stone foot, is the very statue that was sold in his estate auction at the time. 

This statue and its serpentine foot stand on a tall, straight ebony pedestal with bevelled corners, inlaid with an art nouveau motif in mother-of-pearl.

Literature:
Karin Geiger en Sabine Tausch, Rudolf Maison (1854-1904); Regensburg – München – Berlin, 2016