Heinrich Max or Gabriel von Max
Dead Green Monkey [Tote grüne Meerkatze], a model for the painting "Affen als Kunstrichter" ["Monkeys as Art Critics"] (1889)
circa 1870
albumen print photograph with hand-tinting, mounted on card
20,8 x 16,4 cm (photograph); 31,8 x 24 cm (card)
provenance: estate (Nachlass) of the artist
This photograph, probably taken Gabriel von Max or his brother Heinrich Max (1847-1900), depicts a dead monkey of a species known as the green monkey (Chlorocebus sabaeus). For related photographs in the collection of the Deutsches Kunstarchiv im Germanischen Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg, see Pamela Kort and Max Hollein, eds., Darwin: Art and the Search for Origins [(Cologne: Wienand Verlag, 2009) (editions in German and in English), cat. no. 164, ill. p. 204 (another print of the identical photograph); and Karin Althaus and Helmut Friedel, eds., Gabriel von Max, Malerstar, Darwinist, Spiritist (München: Hirmer Verlag, 2010), ills. 291-297, pg. 302-303 (illustration 291 seems to be a photograph of the same dead monkey in profile).
Most significantly, the monkey with upraised arms on the far right in Gabriel von Max's masterpiece, "Affen als Kunstrichter" ["Monkeys as Art Critics"] (1889), also known as "Die Kunstrichter," in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Neue Pinokothek, Munich, was based directly upon our photograph:
