Alberich and the Rhinemaidens

In 1885, Merson was commissioned by the art critic Arthur Duparc to illustrate scenes from Richard Wagner’s opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, of which the première took place in Bayreuth in the Summer of 1876. While the project was never completed, several sketches by Merson for it are known, and at least one related lithograph was produced (A.-N. Stévenin, ‘Luc-Olivier Merson illustrateur’, in L’Étrange Monsieur Merson, exhib. cat., Rennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 2008-2009, pp. 224-226). Depicting the first scene of the tetralogy’s first opera, Das Rheingold, in which the dwarf Alberich steals the gold entrusted to the Rhinemaidens, this print closely follows a large and highly finished drawing dated 1885, which was recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 2013.924). The present drawing must have been made in preparation of this final design, generally similar but different in the overall layout, with the gold at the bottom of the composition, rather than at the top, as in the solution ultimately chosen.